The most economical way Jack has found to buy a good cut of beef, is to purchase the entire tenderloin in a shrink-wrap package. Here is a butcher showing what a whole tenderloin looks like.
On Saturday, Jack found a 7 ½-pound tenderloin at a butcher shop for only $4.99/pound. This is the best price we have ever seen for whole beef tenderloin. Over the summer, he was seeing them for $5.89/pound at Rainbow and $6.99/pound at Cub. This was also the largest one he has purchased, since they usually average around 3 ½ to 5 ½ pounds each.
Jack is willing to spend the time (about 45 minutes) cutting up the beef and removing the silver skin to save money. From this piece of meat, he cut 15 (5-oz) steaks which he wrapped individually in foil and put into our freezer. There was still lot of scraps from the narrow end of the tenderloin that he cut up put into resealable plastic freezer bags for stir-fries and other recipes that start with bite-size strips of beef.
We were hungry for Beef Stroganoff and so he cut about 1 ½ pounds of beef for this recipe.
Then he cooked some onions and mushrooms.
After he removed them from the skillet, he cooked the beef.
He returned the veggies to the skillet with the beef and added beef broth and sour cream.
In around 30 minutes, dinner was ready. Here it is—Classic Beef Stroganoff.
