Mexican Blend
Daily, Kinda - Bend, Oregon
Recipes

Beef Stroganoff

Carlos A Perez — One of my favs — top sirloin, sweet onions, mushrooms & Marsala, over fresh egg pasta — 2026 — Nº 001
The handwritten Stroganoff Au Perry recipe card, in blue ink on lined paper, held in a ring binder
Mom’s Recipe

The card says “butter or margarine.” Butter wins.

Hands-on
45 min
Cook time
2 hr
Yield
Serves 6 generously
Ingredients
  • 2 lb beef loin top sirloin, sliced ¼ inch on the angle
  • ¼ lb Tillamook unsalted butter
  • 6 medium sweet Walla Walla onions, sliced thin on a mandoline
  • 2 lb fresh white mushrooms, sliced thin
  • 2 tablespoons tomato paste
  • 2 cups real dairy sour cream, none of that light stuff
  • 1½ teaspoons coarse kosher sea salt, ground fresh
  • 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
  • 1½ cups Marsala wine, going in three separate times
  • Fresh fettuccini egg pasta, cut short
Method
  1. Put the sirloin in the freezer about an hour before you plan to cut it. Half frozen it slices clean. Room temperature it’s a battle even w/ the sharpest Japanese steel.
  2. Slice the steak on the angle into ¼ inch strips. Onions thin on the mandoline, mushrooms thin.
  3. Melt half the butter in your biggest skillet and sauté the beef until brown. Take it out and leave every stuck-on brown bit in the pan.
  4. Half of the remaining butter, then the onions - 10 minutes over medium, longer if you are at higher elevation. Take them out.
  5. The rest of the butter, then the mushrooms - about 5 minutes over medium.
  6. Beef and onions back in. Add the tomato paste, sour cream, salt, pepper and the 1st third of the Marsala. Mix it thoroughly.
  7. Cover and cook low. 2nd pour of Marsala at 30 minutes, 3rd pour at an hour, and keep going until the beef is properly tender.
  8. Lid off, and let it simmer down until the sauce coats a spoon.
  9. Serve it over fresh egg pasta cut fettuccini and cut short. The recipe calls for rice, but I know better.

Sliced sirloin on a plate beside a bowl of sliced mushrooms, onions behind, in a dim kitchen

Paper-thin sweet onion rings from a mandoline, filling a stainless bowl

Two pounds of sliced white mushrooms heaped well past the rim of a white casserole dish

Strips of top sirloin still frosty from the freezer, stacked on a white cutting board

A board of sliced beef in the foreground, butter melting in a cast iron skillet on the gas range behind

Raw strips of sirloin laid out in a single layer in a hot cast iron skillet

The sirloin browned through, steaming in the cast iron skillet

The bottom of the pot after the beef comes out, glazed brown with stuck-on bits

Mushrooms cooked down to gold and brown in the cast iron skillet

The onions collapsed to a soft translucent pile in the bottom of a tall pot

Beef and mushrooms folded back together in the skillet, tongs resting in the pan

Two basset hounds on the kitchen floor, one asleep on the mat and one sitting up panting

My mom wrote that card. Blue ink, lined paper, three holes punched, and a grease spot sitting right on top of “6 generous servings” - which tells you about how many times it got pulled out of the binder.

It says “butter or margarine.” Margarine was a thing back then, I guess like Sweet-n-Low, but we know better now. When I make this, it gets butter, every single time. Tillamook unsalted.

Just about everything else I’ve changed.

Onions first. The card says 6 medium, thinly sliced. Thinly sliced by hand is not the same animal as thinly sliced on a mandoline - sweet Walla Wallas, run through until they’re basically translucent ribbons. 6 onions makes a pile you will not believe fits in one pot. It fits. It cooks down nicely. 2 lb of mushrooms looks even more ridiculous. Also cooks down nicely.

The steak goes in the freezer about an hour before I cut it. The card already knows this one - it’s right there in parentheses, “partially freeze steak for easier slicing.” She wasn’t kidding. Half frozen it slices clean on the angle.

Sour cream. 2 full cups of the real stuff, none of that light business. Salt: coarse kosher sea salt, ground fresh. Pepper: double it - half a teaspoon of pepper in a pot this size is a rumor.

Then it’s butter, beef, out. Butter, onions, out. Butter, mushrooms. Everybody back in the pot together. Everything brown stuck to the bottom after the beef comes out is the good part. Do not wash that pot.

And then the wine. The card puts half a cup of Marsala in at the very end, simmers 5 minutes, done. I use about 3x that and it doesn’t all go in at once - some at the beginning with all the seasonings, more at about 30 minutes, more again at about an hour, and then the lid comes off and it just simmers down. That’s the whole difference for sure. The rest is her recipe. The wine going in three times is my doing.

Give everything longer than the card says. We’re at about 3,600 feet in Bend, water boils at 204° instead of 212°, and “cook over low heat 30 minutes or until beef is tender” turns into an hour and change before it’s actually tender. Not a problem. It’s a Sunday.

Forget the wild rice. I make fresh egg pasta and run it through the fettuccini cutter on the Kitchen Aid, then cut the noodles short - wide and stubby, so they hold the sauce instead of sliding off the fork. There’s a basic egg pasta post back in the 2008 archive and I need to update it, because we make it way way better now.

Gus and Oscar park themselves directly under the pot and wait.

There’s no picture of the final plate. These photos are from a few different winters - some November, for my dad’s birthday, some February, for mine. I shoot the cook when I can. Then it’s time to plate, and somebody has opened a Pinot Noir from Dundee, and everybody’s talking. My iPhone gets left on the counter by the kitchen. We start dinner and enjoy the moment.

I’ll get a plated shot one day.

mexicanblend.com — 2026