Dried Wild Mushroom Stroganoff

A rich stroganoff made with dried wild mushrooms, sour cream and tender beef, venison, or whatever meat you have. It's the perfect thing for when the weather's cold and your craving a bowl of comfort food. Don't skip the egg noodles!

Nothing said comfort food to me like a steaming hot bowl of mom's stroganoff growing up. I don't know what she put in hers, but more than likely it was a couple cans of cream of mushroom soup and some beef chuck. It wasn't something we'd have every week, but it was definitely in the line up here and there. What I really remember was that it was good stuff.

Now, in my kitchen, I typically save making heavy dishes for the deep fall or winter, when fresh mushrooms are unavailable. With all the hunting I do during the growing season, I'm probably not going to go out of my way to buy mushrooms in the off season when I already have a ton of them dried at home.

With that in mind, I set out to build a dried wild mushroom strogranoff designed by the mushroom hunter, for the mushroom hunter that I could refer back to here and there to riff on.

Each blend will give you a different flavor. I used a mix of dried black trumpets and porcini mushrooms.Most recipes will focus on the meat here. I used venison, and it's great, but any red meat will be fine. Our strogi here is all about the shrooms.

The only problem, is that unlike cream of mushroom soup, different species of dried mushrooms will give you completely different results here, so it's important to take that into account. For example, if you go to the store and buy dried porcini that were picked in Europe, the proportions below will make a stroganoff that tastes very strong, even for mycophagists like me.

The same could be said for using dried black trumpets, since large amounts of them can give food a bitter taste. If you want to use black trumpets, I would start on the small side, using about 10 grams (roughly a cup of small dried trumpets) and go from there, until you're pleased with the taste.

Using dried chanterelles or hedgehog mushrooms will give you chewy pieces of leather unless you cook them for a few hours beforehand. Some mushroom species are nearly interchangeable in their deliciousness though: morels, boletes and good tasting porcini-oid mushrooms, as well as black trumpet mushrooms will all make excellent stroganoff.

Other than that, this is pretty self-explanitory, but, for posterity, I'll highlight a few ingredients I think are important:

• Booze. Sherry, or if you're in a pinch, brandy. Sure, it's hard to make cream and mushrooms taste bad, but going the extra mile will give you the plate-licking status you want here.
• Shallots vs onions. Most recipes call for onions, I reach for the shallots, since they just make a richer, deeper end product, and the cost is negligible.
• Herbs to finish. Dill, cilantro or chives--take your pick. There's really nothing like something fresh to lighten it up at the end. I used cilantro since it was what I had on hand.