“Can you send me the pierogi recipe?”
I got this text from my sister Sunday. I was out grocery shopping so I texted her that I would send it later. After I got home, I found my grandmother’s recipe and called her with it. I realized I had all the ingredients for it for myself and decided to make a half batch.
Pierogi are a dumpling. My family is part Polish so I always knew them with potato and onion but slavic cultures seem to all have something falls under the pierogi cateogory that are just a little different or at least according to Wiki, including making them with cheese or meat and sometimes filling them with fruit for dessert pierogi. Personally, most dumplings whether Polish, Ukrainian, Italian, or Chinese are pretty good to me.
They are a lot of work to make. You have to make the dough, make the filling-oniony mashed potatoes, roll out the dough, cut out rounds, add filling to the rounds, and fold them in to half moon shapes. Then they boil in hot water and I personally brown them in a little butter. A friend at work likes them with sour cream and I once knew someone who ate them with ketchup.
Pierogi dough
Since Pat was skiing, my family was an hour away, and Travis, my Polish-American friend, lives in another state, I was making them myself and only did a half batch.
Dough with filling
I also chose to use a more ravioli-like technique and roll the dough out, spoon filling on it, roll out more dough and lay it on top, and cut rounds around the filling. They were twice as big and maybe not quite as good as when folded but I am only one person.
Pierogi
The half batch made sense at the time but no I have no leftover pierogi and I regret my decision.
Delicious pierogi
They were great but I would go back to folding them in half because of the size and filling to dough ratio.
Half-Batch of my grandmother’s pierogi
Dough
4 cups flour
2 eggs
1/2 cup sour cream
pinch of salt
warm water as needed
Mix eggs, sour cream, salt, and flour until dough feels like velvet. Add water as needed. Roll dough out to medium thickness. Cut into circles with diameter of about 3 1/2.” Add 1 tbsp filling. Foldover and seal edges.
Add to large pot of boiling water until pierogi float to surface.
They can be frozen by placing them on a cookie sheet in a single in the freezer. After they are frozen, place in ziplock bag.
Pierogi filling
Potato Filling
1 lb potatoes
1/2 onion minced
1/2 tbsp butter
Cook and mash potatoes, saute onions. Add ingredients together.
- I love this; it's like having another set of hands.
- Perfect for making ice cream and sorbet.
- One of my favorite Christmas gifts. Great for going from stovetop to oven.
- Another Christmas gift that is useful in the kitchen.
Thanks for the link
The pierogi look tasty! How polish-american am I if the last member of my family to be born in poland was my great-grandmother?
You are as Polish as I am then…I don’t know anyone who makes home-made pierogi whose family didn’t come from Poland at some point…I tried looking for pierogi recipes in my cookbooks, and I have a lot, but I haven’t found any.
[...] from this column before and loved it. I have some of my mother’s, and grandmothers‘ recipes. I love their versions (usually) but I do like to update them a little and change them because of [...]
Hi. I found your recipe and will have to try it. I do make a quick version with WonTon wrappers and left over mashed potatoes. Just use a brush with some water to seal the wrappers, but you already know that. My mom always served them with onions sauted in butter. We add mushrooms to that and we love them. The texture is a bit different because it isn’t a heavy dough, but in some ways, it is kind of nice because they aren’t quite as filling and you can use them as a great side dish to pork chops or something like that.
Also, these do not freeze well as moisture from defrosting them makes the wrappers stick together. But they are so quick to make that you just need to have some leftover potatoes and wrappers and you are set!
Have a great day!
Coleen
I find if I freeze them in a single layer on a cookie sheet, then put them together in a bag they don’t stick.
I love pierogi sauteed in butter. I am usually too lazy to add onions.
[...] pirogi dough is similar to my grandmother’s recipe except that it also include butter. I thought the butter made it a little harder to work with but [...]