Beef Stroganoff with Sourdough Bread Topped with Butter and Cheese:
Fall of 2022 brought some new foods into our lives -- stroganoff and sourdough bread!
On a recent trip to Costco, we took some time to peruse the selections to get ideas on what else we could add to our meals at home. We tend to stick to our favorites, so it's good when we take time to check out other selections and change up our meals a bit.
We don't always buy something the first time we see it, but we liked the looks of the stroganoff, and the ingredients, so we picked up a package a couple weeks later along with sourdough bread.
One 22-ounce package of stroganoff gives us each a good serving, supplemented with 3 slices of cheesy bread each (mine topped with Havarti, and his topped with Jarlsberg). Since the stroganoff comes with two packages, we are set for another dinner the following week!
The sourdough bread comes with three loaves in a pack which gives us plenty of opportunity to enjoy the bread throughout the week, toasted as a side dish with just butter or cheese too; sometimes with salads and sometimes with other meals -- and sometimes topped with Nutella!
Cost Breakdown & Savings:
- The stroganoff cost $16.99 the last time we purchased it in October 2022; since we get four servings out of the two packages, it breaks down to $4.25 a serving.
- The sourdough bread comes with three loaves at a cost of $8.99, making it $3.00 per loaf of bread; we use roughly a quarter of one loaf for dinner which comes out to $0.75 for both of us.
- The sliced cheese we use on the bread cost $12.99 the last time we purchased it in October 2022; with 128 slices in the pack, it breaks down to $0.11 a slice, and I use three to four slices for each of us, at a cost of less than $0.90 for both of us if I use eight slices.
- The butter we use cost $14.49 in October 2022; four 8-ounce bars come in a box, making them $3.63 each; with 16 tablespoons in 8 ounces, one tablespoon of butter costs $0.23; even though I use less than a tablespoon of butter I'll use that as a guesstimate for the dinner cost.
- Not counting the salt I add to the stroganoff or our drinks, the meal cost is $4.25 times 2 servings which equals $8.50, plus the bread, cheese, and butter ($0.75 + $0.90 + $0.23), which equals $10.38 for both of us.
- Not pictured are the drinks we have with dinner, Waterloo Sparkling Water; we purchased a 24-pack in September 2022 from Costco for $8.69 which breaks down to $0.37 a can and $0.74 for both of us; even with two cans, the total for dinner is $11.12, and while it's a higher cost meal for being an at-home meal, it's still cheaper than going out to eat which eats up more money!
- Compared to the closest restaurant to us which doesn't even have stroganoff on their menu, and none of their pasta dinners cost less than $23; that tells me that if they had stroganoff, it would most likely be in the same price range, costing the two of us at least $46; that makes it a savings of $34.88 for one night for the two of us to eat stroganoff at home purchased at Costco!
- If we ate stroganoff at a restaurant once a week for a month, based on the local restaurant prices, that would be $46 times 4, which would be $184; and if we spent $46 on one meal out for 52 weeks in a year it would cost $2,392, and that's not including inflation, taxes, and gas to drive somewhere! Eating stroganoff at home once a week for 4 weeks comes out to $44.48, and if we had the meal once a week for 52 weeks it would cost $578.24, which is a yearly savings of $1,813.76, all from not eating out once a week for a year!
Preparation & Clean-Up:
The first time I made the stroganoff I prepared it in the conventional oven per the directions: opened the package and emptied it into an oven-safe dish with lid and let it go for 13ish minutes at 350 degrees; I do this while my husband has his post-work shower.
The second time I made the dish, I made some improvements:
- to get all the stroganoff out of the package I added a little water to rinse the inside and get as much of the stroganoff out as possible and poured it into the dish for the oven;
- adding this extra water (a couple tablespoons maybe) gave the stroganoff a nice amount of moisture, since the directions warn not to reheat for too long since it can go dry;
- I also added salt since we both added it on our own last time, and I let the stroganoff stay in the oven longer (20-25 minutes) since it cooled off pretty quickly the first time;
- with the extra moisture there was no drying out, and even though the stroganoff was good the first time, the texture came out so much better the second time!
I toasted the sourdough bread topped with butter and cheese in the Ninja Foodi Digital Air Fry Oven on the Toast setting for 6 to 7 minutes on the Dark II setting for the temperature.
I don't use the big tray that came with the Ninja Foodi for toast; I use another smaller tray and rack from the toaster oven we had that was replaced by the Ninja Foodi.
Post-dinner clean-up was easy: the dish and lid for the stroganoff, two dinner bowls and a salad bowl (my husband gets a small salad before dinner while I prefer my salad during lunch), two bread plates, silverware, and the toast tray/rack; all hand-washed, dried, and put away that night except the toast tray/rack that I prefer to air dry overnight.
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