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Looking for good pierogi wrapper recipe


ellencho

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Hi all, a while back my computer died, and along with it, a very good pierogi wrapper recipe. I was originally going to make a thread in the Europe forums but I thought maybe I'd get more hits in here.

Does anyone have a pierogi skin/wrapper recipe that they'd like to share with me? That and perhaps a good recipe for a cheese filled pierogi? I have a large portion of mashed potatoes as well as a bit of farmer's cheese that I'd like to doctor up and use as pierogie fillings this weekend. Thanks. :wink:

Believe me, I tied my shoes once, and it was an overrated experience - King Jaffe Joffer, ruler of Zamunda

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I've tried several times to duplicate my grandmothers recipe but my dough is always too hard, than I tried the recipe listed in the new gourmet cookbook and it was exactly like my grandmothers, the recipe is here http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/recipe_views/views/104662

I don't have a cheese filling recipe

potato filling: 5 large potatos cooked and mashed; add 1/2 cup shredded cheese (I use either cheddar or gruyer(sp?); sautee 1 med onion in butter and add to mixture; salt and pepper to taste, I will also add either some cream cheese/milk to acheive the desired consistancy (can't be too soft) cool and fill dough with about 1 teaspoon of filling (depends on the size of the pierogi).

Have fun!

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Thanks lcdm. The wrappers recipe was great. I used my own potatoes recipe since I had a bunch of leftover mashed potatoes, but our filling recipe did sound awfully similar. I used orange cheddar and threw in some parsley I had leftover from something else.

Believe me, I tied my shoes once, and it was an overrated experience - King Jaffe Joffer, ruler of Zamunda

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jack cheese and jalepeno pierogi.....drool. No one would expect the bang of hot pepper in a nice pierogi browned in the pan with a little onion confit and sour cream :rolleyes:

Edited by handmc (log)

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Ah, it's been way too long since I did a butt. - Susan Fahning aka "snowangel"

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One summers evening drunk to hell, I sat there nearly lifeless…Warren

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I'm neither Polish nor Catholic, but over the summer I helped our local Polish Catholic church prepare the pierogi for the annual St. Stephen's Festival. I didn't help to make the filling so I can't help with that part, but I saw the rest of the process. Their procedure went as follows:

The day before you make the dough, or longer, make your filling. Give the filling plenty of time to cool before continuing. Dish the filling onto parchment or waxed paper-lined sheet pans, making each scoop about the size of a ping-pong ball. Try to keep the filling scoops in nice neat balls, because the neater the ball, the easier it is to form the pierogi. Potato filling and cheese filling both scoop reasonably well, but kapusta (cabbage) is much tougher to keep in tight balls so save it for last, after you've had practice with the easy ones. Put 100 filling balls on each full-size sheet pan: 8 across and 12 down, and four extras wherever you can squeeze them in. Freeze (or at least chill well) the filling balls on their sheet pans overnight.

Have as many people making dough as you have food processors. Expect the food processor motor to heat up and shut down for a while after making a dozen batches or so.

For the dough, buzz in a food processor:

3 c flour (I think they used Gold Medal bleached all-purpose)

1 tsp table salt

1 egg

1 c water, lukewarm

about 1-2 Tbsp margarine (Imperial, temp. of a kitchen with large pots of boiling water in August; one of the women commented that sour cream also works well)

Take the dough ball out of the food processor bowl, and knead a few times by hand. Form into a ball, and set aside until the rollers are ready.

Try to have as many rollers as you have doughmakers. The rollers should keep a little pile of flour nearby, to help flour the rolling surface and the rolling pin. Roll the dough out, trying to keep it uniform, to somewhere between 1/4 and 1/8 inch thick. If the dough is too thick, the pierogi are too large. If the dough is too thin, the filling will poke through. After the dough is rolled, cut the dough into circles with a can that has had both ends removed. The cans were about the size of the cans that fruit comes in, and each cutting can had its own padding for the back end (think like a showercap, but made of fabric and batting) to protect your hand. Put the cut circles on another paper-covered sheet pan and deliver to the pinchers. Form the scraps into a ball and set aside. After a few batches, you'll have enough scraps to reroll and cut.

Have as many pinchers available as possible. The pinchers will need a comfortable chair, a tray of frozen filling balls, a tray of dough circles, an empty lined tray for the pinched pierogi, and a small bowl of flour. To form each pierog, take a dough circle and stretch it slightly, into an oval. (If the circles are too thin, return them to the rollers to be combined with the scraps and rerolled thicker. If the circles are too thick, return them to the rollers to be rolled thinner and cut again.) Place a filling ball in the center of the dough oval, fold the dough over, and pinch the edges together tightly. Be sure the filling is tucked entirely inside, because if filling is at the edge, the dough won't hold together. If your fingers get sticky from the filling, dip them in a bit of flour to help the dough stick to dough and not finger. Place the finished pierogi on the lined sheet pan. You should be able to get 100 on a tray, just like the filling balls. While you pinch, talk with your neighbors (in English or Polish), and give the rollers a hard time, especially Father Ed.

As each tray is filled, it gets covered with a kitchen towel before it goes to a checker. The checker lifts the towel off the tray, and inspects each pierog to be sure the edges are firmly attached. If needed, the checker pinches the edges together again, double-checking that any filling is safely inside. If the dough was pulled so thin that it rips, or if a pierog is otherwise unsalvageable, open the pierog and return the filling ball to the pincher, and toss out the dough. When the tray is checked, put the towel back over it and send it to the kitchen.

Have a large pot or two of boiling water on the stove, as well as a large skillet with melted margarine. The pierogi get boiled, removed from the water with a large skimmer, and then simmered in margarine. Try to do this shortly after the pierogi are checked, so they don't dry out. If necessary, tell the doughmakers and pinchers to slow down. As the pierogi are finished, they get removed from the margarine bath onto a couple of UNlined sheet pans reserved specifically for the purpose. Wheel them away from the stove to the coolest part of the room, and direct a fan on them to cool them quicker. Once they've cooled, they can be packaged, LABELED, and refrigerated or frozen until the day of the festival when they get sold.

After the pierogi with the filling du jour are finished, it's time to reclaim the filling ball trays, to scoop the next day's filling so they're ready for the next day.

Hope that helps,

MelissaH

MelissaH

Oswego, NY

Chemist, writer, hired gun

Say this five times fast: "A big blue bucket of blue blueberries."

foodblog1 | kitchen reno | foodblog2

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I hesitate to submit this - I'm sure it'll cause an ungodly world of shit at Christmas if I get too much iced vodka into me and blurt it out - but since my Mom's family is Ukranian R to the C, you know we've got a money perogy recipe...so here it is, kindly re-written from the original 40's looseleaf by my brother. (As a warning: he's been reading Bourdain.)

Lundy Family Perogy Receipe

Dough

1 egg

1 cup warm water

1 tsp salt

flour as needed (~3 cups -- enough to make a stiff dough)

1 tsp cooking oil

Fillings

It warms my heart that the family perogy tome has three options for fillings. Of course, the only real option is the first one, and you'd be a fool and a communist to have the nerve and the money to introduce options two or three. But I'll include them for the sake of posterity.

1. mashed potato w/ dry curd cottage cheese

The original. Don't forget to season the filling aggressively, and not to overfill. That's why grandma's always taste so fuckin' good. I figured that out over the summer when I watched her make them the last time.

- variations - The actual card says you can use cheddar cheese or fried onions and bacon and through them in with the mashed potatoes. That said, you're a bright boy and can figure that out - and we both know that's just a bunch of bullshit anyway.

2. Cottage cheese and egg yolks

3. Well cooked, drained sauerkraut

(my note: ...holy shit, there's other fillings? With my grandma and my ma, it's potatoes and dry curd cottage cheese and salt n' pepper. That's it.)

Assembly

Mix wet and dry dough ingredients together and work well until a ball of dough is formed. Kneed until smooth on floured board, then give the dough at least 15 minutes to relax before rolling. Now roll out the damn thing over and over again, turning and rolling until the amount of shrinkage disapates. Spread the dough out into a sheet about 1/8" thick. Cut out circular shapes about finger's length in diameter using a round cookie cutter, knife, or whatever you have handy. Fill them up (remembering not to get greedy like your lovely mother), wet one half

of the outer rim with some water, and crimp the outer edges. Congratulations, you made your first perogi. As your Fordist line continues, you can leave them a floured board or cookie sheet, covered by a kitchen towel until you're ready to cook them.

Cooking

Similar to fresh pasta. Take a big pot and fill it with boiling water. Salt. Add perogies. They will sink. Gently stir to ensure they don't stick. When they rise to the surface of the water, they are finished, but you could let them sit for another minute or two with no harm done. This receipe calls for a touch of oil to be added to the cooking water to prevent sticking, and it wouldn't do any great harm. If you're having problems with sticking, you probably overloaded the pot.

This is finished at this point, and are excellent with onion butter (Uh, minced onions fried in copious amounts of butter) or sour cream). But as anyone who knows anything knows, perogies are much better when they're pan-fried.

Add some onion butter to a hot, non-stick skillet. Add cooked perogies and pan-fry until golden brown and crisp on both sides. Serve with more onion butter. Ukrainian heaven.

-=-

Todd, who pretty much has the coolest family ever

Todd McGillivray

"I still throw a few back, talk a little smack, when I'm feelin' bulletproof..."

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