Homemade Pierogi
It's rather hard to hate the common pierogi. They are filled with potatoes, often cheese and chives and everything else that people love. As a kid my parents used to make pierogi as a quick and easy dinner, and while I won't lie, we did them fairly bland, to this day it's one of my comfort foods. We're coming back to streaming with the hope of making more content, and I wanted to start with something I loved to eat as a kid.
This homemade pierogi recipe is good to make 3 dozen of these delightful dumplings. Double it for more! Feed an army, make a Ukrainian grandma happy.
Ingredients
Dough
2-3/4 Cups of flour
1/2 tsp of salt.
1/2 cup of water
2 eggs
1/4 cup of butter, softened
Filling
2 medium potatoes, peeled and cubed
5 tbps of cream cheese
1/4 cup of chives
1 tbps of butter
1/4 tsp of salt
1/4 tsp of pepper
Options
Here you can serve the with whatever you want, this is just how we are making our pierogies. We’ll be adding garlic sausage to ours for example. Other options include:
Onions
Garlic
bacon
Ground beef
Chicken
Really, whatever you think might go good stuffed into a pierogi, you’re probably right. I bet nutella and bananas would be great, with some brown sugar? Yeah, that sounds good to me.
Directions
In a food processor, stand mixer or just a bowl, combine flour and salt and blend thoroughly. Now add in your water, egg and butter, mixing until the dough forms a ball. You can add a little extra flour or water, if the mixture isn’t right. Let it rest for 15 to 30 minutes, even though you did all the hard work. Dough is notoriously lazy.
In a large sauce pan you are going to place your potatoes. Cover them with water, and bring to a boil over high heat. Once boiling, reduce heat, and cover while they simmer. They should be soft, like a business man’s hands, this will take about 15 minutes or so. While doing this, take time to prep your additions. We’ll be lightly cooking our sausage, to finish later.
Drain potatoes. Over very low heat, stir potatoes until steam has evaporated, 1-2 minutes. Mash them, but not too sloppy, need to be able to have it hold some consistency in the pierogi. Stir in cream cheese, salt, pepper and chive mixture; set aside.
Now that your dough has had time to be thoroughly lazy, it’s time to put it to work. There will be too much dough, so divide into 4 parts. Make a mess of your cook space and lightly flour a surface. Roll one portion flat, you’re looking for a thickness of about 1/8th of an inch. Most will tell you to use a biscuit cutter, I am a millennial so I am going to use this roughly 3-inch diameter cup I have floured lightly. Place about 2 teaspoons of filling into the centre of each cup circle you have created. Dampen the edges with water (seriously every recipe says moisten, it’s awful - oh no I did it too). Now fold it in half and press the edges to seal. Do this 35 more times, maybe rope your partner into helping. Or that army you plan to feed.
Bring a non-stick large pot filled with water to a boil. Add your piergoi in batches. Reduce the head so it has a light simmer, and cook the pierogi until they float to the top and are tender. This will be roughly a minute, maybe two. Remove from the water, if you have a slotted spoon I recommend using it.
In your skillet, you are going to melt some butter, and add in 4-6 pierogi at a time. Sauté the pierogi and your add ins until lightly brown and warm whole way through. Sprinkle with seasoning, and serve fresh.
Freezing options
Place pierogi that have been boiled aside and let cool. Sprinkle lightly with flour and place in freezer safe container. These should keep for about 3 months, but if you can go that long without eating them all, you might be a monster.
