Table for One
Slow-Cooker Beef Stroganoff Is Why I’ll Never Throw Out My Crock-Pot
Not even for the Instant Pot.
When I bought Alfred (my mustard yellow Dutch oven) years ago with my very first paycheck as an editorial intern, it felt like a rite of passage. That Friday I brought home a hunk of pork shoulder from Dickson’s (my butcher to this day), seared it in olive oil, then braised it in red wine, fennel, and herbs, "low and slow" as they say. It tasted like adulthood.
Still, there are certain foods I only ever make in my blue-checkered slow cooker, which I'm also quite fond of. TV-dinner beef stroganoff, for example. Hal (the Crock-Pot) may not be shiny and French like Alfred, and I may have stolen him from my mother back home in Georgia, but he's still a good, reliable buddy in my kitchen, even after all those years of service. He also happens to make very delicious brown food. And as Nigella Lawson once said, "brown food tastes the best."
Furthermore, having recently acquired a kitchen with a dishwasher, I find that I'm looking for more and more reasons to keep the Dutch oven stowed away because 1) it's so heavy and 2) it's a pain in the keister to wash. Food just seems to crust onto Alfred, whereas Hal is sparkly clean after one cycle through the dishwasher.
Perhaps it's out-of-fashion that I still own a Crock-Pot. The world seems to have turned its back on single-purpose slow cookers, opting instead for multipurpose cookers like the Instant Pot. And boy, are we in the era of the Instant Pot.
It took a year for America to catch up, but since Melissa Clark said it in The New York Times in 2017, sales have skyrocketed (the Instant Pot is the 2018 bestseller in America on Amazon). Google searches for "Instant Pot recipes" are now as voluminous as those for "slow cooker recipes" and "Crock-Pot recipes." Major cookbook publisher Clarkson Potter is putting out four Instant Pot–specific titles this fall, including one of Clark's, Comfort in an Instant, following her Dinner in an Instant which came out last year.
“There’s no other single gadget that can make weeknight cooking easier,” Clark wrote in the Times. “It can cook food either quickly or slowly, and it does both consistently, evenly and automatically. Get one, and you can get rid of your slow cooker.”
Despite Clark's advice, I have yet to get rid of my slow cooker. Here's why: When I want something like beef stroganoff, that childhood comfort, I want it the way I've had it for years. It's more than just for the ease that I use Hal (though I do love his single switch and mere four options: "Off," "Low," "High," and "Keep Warm"). It's for the ritual of it all, knowing that I'm cooking the same thing—and in the same way—that Americans have been making stroganoff since 1971, when the Crock-Pot-brand slow cooker came out.
I've been thinking about the slow cooker a lot these days, especially whether or not Americans will soon be getting rid of theirs for the Instant Pot (which, we should mention here, has a "Slow Cook" function). Certain kitchen appliances are fads, but a part of me can't help but feel that the Crock-Pot isn't like the manual egg beater (the one that looks like a unicycle), or that awkward sifter with the handle you have to crank (which gets flour everywhere). It's a way of life for so many Americans who need the convenience of being able to set something in the morning and have dinner waiting for them 8 hours later when they come home from work—or to have it simmering overnight and ready when they awake. There's nothing more American than 8-hour food.
Even if all Americans, someday, were to toss their slow cookers, the slow-cooker recipe will never go away. I have this theory that where other cultures celebrate chewy foods with texture (like naengmyun in Korea, mochi in Japan, socarrat in Spain, and black licorice in Sweden), we here in the States love soft, slow-cooked foods. Things you can dump into a single device—no searing, no dirtying of other pans—and, at the flip of a switch, have magicked into a home-cooked meal you barely have to chew.
At least for me, it's exactly what I want to eat when the weather starts to cool down in the fall. In fact, I suppose it's the kind of food I only ever ate during the school year, on a tray, in a cafeteria (as my mother cooked mostly Korean dishes at home). Appropriately, stroganoff is the epitome of the past: brown nursery food. It may not be beautiful, you might not Instagram it—but you sure as hell want to eat it.
I'm with Sam Sifton when he said, in 2015, that 8 hours "is a long time to simmer most anything other than beans, steel-cut oats or a leather boot."
I personally hate the way 8-hour Crock-Pot food tastes, which is admittedly why I stopped using Hal for a few years, as I favored the 3-hour braise of Dutch oven cooking (emphasis on oven). But recently, as I wanted to develop slow-cooker recipes for those of you asking for them, I realized that the "High" function worked just as well as the oven. And in 5 hours, the food didn't come out utterly destroyed. It kept its integrity. I've tested this same recipe at 8 hours on "Low" and found that the meat became tough when cooked that long. When I whined to one of my chef friends about this, he said, "Chuck meat does this thing where it starts tough, goes soft, then goes tough again." So there you go.
This is how I make stroganoff today: loaded with fresh cremini mushrooms, red onion, and Worcestershire sauce (to give it that Salisbury steak taste from the '70s). 5 hours on "High." It's not a fancier, chef-ier stroganoff by any means, but it's a very good TV dinner.
| 2 | pounds beef chuck stew meat |
| 1 | red onion, diced |
| 8 | ounces cremini mushrooms, sliced |
| 1 | (10.75-ounce) can condensed cream of mushroom soup |
| 1/4 | cup Worcestershire sauce |
| Salt and pepper, to taste | |
| 8 | ounces sour cream |
| 12 | ounces egg noodles, cooked, for serving |
| 1/4 | cup fresh parsley, roughly chopped |
| 2 | pounds beef chuck stew meat |
| 1 | red onion, diced |
| 8 | ounces cremini mushrooms, sliced |
| 1 | (10.75-ounce) can condensed cream of mushroom soup |
| 1/4 | cup Worcestershire sauce |
| Salt and pepper, to taste | |
| 8 | ounces sour cream |
| 12 | ounces egg noodles, cooked, for serving |
| 1/4 | cup fresh parsley, roughly chopped |
Do you still use your slow cooker? Let us know in the comments below.
Written by: Eric Kim
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75 Comments
This is awesome!
I have many slow cookers, some from way back in college. My favorites are those that came in a row of three. We use them for taco bars, two of them for T-day buffets, winter soup and sandwich buffets. All kinds of stuff. They're the ideal solution for the group of guests who can't agree on one soup, or a mix of meat eaters and vegetarians, whatever. Slow cookers are here to stay.
I was in a brief vegetarian phase so I would just toss in some veggies, some beans and some miso and would have a great meal when I got home from work.
I now have two pots, a regular one and an oval one with more capacity. I especially use them for homemade soups, stews and pot roast.
I also have an instant pot, but used it just once. I think I have a prejudice against pressure-cooked food.
Instant pot, dutch oven, no slight intended you are wonderful in your own rights. But my ❤ BELONGS TO SAM ! ( my svratched, dented, well worn blue cornflower crockpot).
The weather here is kind of nasty so I'm going to see if I can bring a little sunshine to my table.
Thanks Laurence T.
God Bless.
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