Beef Stroganoff in the Instant pot

Not a truly authentic one since I used stew meat cut in chunks - I gather the truly authentic recipe would use flank steak cut in strips?

Beef Stroganoff

-          Dash of canola oil

-          1 tbsp butter

-          2 – 2.5 lb beef stew meat, cut into 1-inch cubes - mine was barely 2 lbs

-          1 ½ cup chopped onion (frozen or fresh) - used frozen

-          16 oz baby bella (cremini) mushrooms

-          1 1/2 cups beef broth -  used BTB beef

-          2 tbsp flour

-          1 tbsp dried minced garlic

-          2 tbsp worcestershire sauce

-          1 tsp salt

-          1 tsp black pepper

-          ½ tsp dried thyme

-          ½ tsp parsley flakes

-          ½-1 cup plain greek yogurt - used a full cup and more

-          Barley or noodles, cooked separately - did barley, which worked out great.

Mix flour with seasoning (salt, pepper, garlic, thyme) and then toss with meat to coat the meat.

Turn on pot to saute setting.  When hot, add oil and then saute meat until brown; remove to plate.

Add butter to melt, then add onions; cook until starting to soften.

Then add mushrooms, cook until reduced in size by half.

Add broth and Worcestershire sauce, make sure bottom of pan is deglazed and then add meat back in

Set pot to manual, high pressure, for 15 minutes.  Allow 10 minutes pressure release.

Turn to saute.  

If very runny, suck up some broth and mix it with 2 tbsp cornstarch, stir into sauce with setting on saute to thicken.

In a separate measuring cup, stir some broth into your yogurt until soft and creamy.  Then add to pot and stir until sauce is nicely thickened.

Barley - in separate batch - ratio is 1:2.5 which is about the most water I've seen in any recipe.  I think I did 22 or 23 minutes.  

Result:  there was definitely too much broth, so it required corn starch to thicken.  And then, it was maybe too hot?  Because even though I mixed broth into the yogurt separately first, it still separated when I added it to the broth.  And then I kept adding more yogurt in hopes of fixing it and the new stuff kept separating also.

Despite that - it tasted really good.  Rich and a bit tart just like it's supposed to.

Next time, I will cut back the liquid a little so maybe we won't need the corn starch.  After some googling, I think the dairy separation was due to the yogurt being cold and the beef broth being boiling.  I will try to prevent the separation of the yogurt at the end by setting the yogurt out to come to room temperature when I start the beef to cooking, put the yogurt in a much bigger container and mix a lot more of the liquid into the yogurt a bit at a time in the separate container, and perhaps let the whole mess cool a bit before I add the yogurt.  

The barley ooked up nicely, though it was a bit sticky - I didn't rinse it first, that probably would have helped.  And I think I like the combo of stroganoff and barley better than over noodles even.  Yum!