Pierogi Recipes

[anzu]

She also made a meat dumpling that had thinner dough and was rounder. It had ground beef, bacon, and onions in it and I know she used LOTS of bacon grease and sour cream for the sauce. Does anyone know that this is? It was SSSOOOO good!!!

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I think you're speaking of koldunai.

I don't have exact quantities, but the dough is flour and egg. For 'one glass' (about three quarters of a standard measuring cup???) of flour, add one whole egg and two egg yolks as well as salt. If additional moisture is needed, use onion juice. Don't add water for extra moisture. Roll the dough out thin with a rolling pin (about 1 mm thickness).

Filling: ground beef, bacon (one quarter of the entire filling quantity), onion that has been reduced to a paste in a food processor (should be smooth in texture), egg, marjoram, black pepper.

For the sauce (again, no exact quantities), bacon, chopped onion, sour cream, salt. Render the bacon, add chopped onion and fry, then stir in sour cream and salt.

If you make it, I'm sure it would qualify for the stuffed pasta cook-off!

Source: W. W. Pochljobkin Nationale Kuchen: Die Kochkunst der sowjetischen Volker (National Cuisine: the cooking of the Soviet Peoples). This is the German translation of a book originally written in Russian and printed in 1978. It's out of print and, as far as I know, has never been translated into English. This is a pity, as it covers a lot of ground - recipes from all the main ethnic groups that were in the USSR, and which most other books don't cover, such as Moldavian, Azerbaijani, Uzbek, and Tajiki recipes, etc. I'm really having fun working through this book.

In the Russian section of this book, there are about 18 different piroshki fillings listed, as well as 8 different types of dough. More on those later, when I have more time.

Re Piazzola's earlier comment on the etymology of the name 'pirog' and 'piroshki'. I had rather been under the impression that the jury was still out on this one, and that there is also the view that it may derive from Old Slavic 'pir' meaning feast or merriment.

Edited September 13, 2005 by anzu (log)

[Angeline7270]

I add sour cream to my pierogi dough and cut down on the eggs. It makes the dough less tough when you fry them in butter and onions after they are boiled.

[Jack Sprat]

My first attempt at pierogies was semi-successful. Made two kinds - goat cheese/tarragon and mushroom. The good news was that the pierogies stayed 100% intact through boiling and then pan-frying in butter. The bad news is that the dough was a little tough. It was hard to roll out b/c it was so non-malleable. The thinner I was able to roll the dough the better the pierogies turned out, but it seemed like too much work compared to what it should be.

I slightly modified a tyler florence recipe: 5 cups flour, 1/4 stick melted butter (down from 1/2 stick), 4 large eggs, 1 teaspoon salt and 1/2 cup plain yogurt (substituted for sour cream).

Obviously I was trying to make the original recipe a little healthier and maybe that screwed things up. I mean, I have no problems frying the pierogies up in some butter, but eggs, melted butter AND sour cream in the dough too? Is all that really necessary? I felt like the butter and eggs in particular could actually have caused the problems with the tough dough.

Seeking alternate recipes and/or advice. First attempt shown below.

Edited December 30, 2007 by Jack Sprat (log)

[Meridian]

One "secret" way of getting a soft dough is to add 1/2 cup or so of mashed potatoes to the dough. These will keep the dough soft.

Some people like the dough rubbery and some more delicate. Your pierogies (also Pyrohy or Varenyky) look pretty good for your first effort.

[Pam R]

I did a demo on meat kreplach here. Same idea, different name. Just skip the last step in forming them - pinching the two tips together.

Anyway, when I make my dough, it's always tender, even silky. And easy. I love your filling idea . . need to experiment.

[jende]

I did a demo on meat kreplach here. Same idea, different name.  Just skip the last step in forming them - pinching the two tips together.

Anyway, when I make my dough, it's always tender, even silky.  And easy.  I love your filling idea . . need to experiment.

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Funny you should post this, I just made a huge batch of my grandma's pierogis yesterday. Her dough recipe is just 2 eggs, 1 T. sour cream (low fat is fine), 1 tsp. salt and about 6 cups of flour. It worked really well for me.

The filling, by the way, was potato and cheese: about 8 mashed potatoes, 1/2 c. of shredded cheddar and 4 oz. of cream cheese. They're a lot of work but so delicious.

[K8memphis]

My mom made the best pierogies evah. Y'know what I just thougth of? Chef-boy wrote down her recipe. Because of it being great food for cyclists, way before he knew he'd be a Chef. This just weeks before she passed. I have it laminated somewhere. But God bless Mom if she didn't make batch after batch after batch and freeze them and save them all up as best she could until we could come to visit her (500 miles away). I know my brother who lived nearby would dip into the supply but shoot I would too if I lived closer.

However, Mom's recipe was one of those tough little bugger doughs that you had to roll out each one decidedly back & forth over & over. Way difficult to roll out but way too wonderful in the eating thereof.

So I found a recipe printed in the newspaper of all things and you could roll out a whole sheet of it and cut happy little circles, plop in the filling and you know the rest. So I made that kind. Mom wanted to hurt me. But man I'm far too lazy to arm wrestle the kind she made. Am I bad or what! Had cream cheese in the dough.

But she used dry cottage cheese in her potato ones, loads of onions and she made sour kraut pierogies. After a while she could no longer find the dry cottage cheese I think so she drained regular cottage cheese. I think bavarian sauer kraut are the best.

Then when you fry them--oh yeah, y'know how they stick like glue to the pan? Well if you lightly flour them they will not stick (y'know after you boil them, lightly four) Well then don't forget to serve them with sour cream.

We never learned any Polish and as kids we mangled the word Pierogi pronouncing it p'doggie and that stuck as our family name for them. So one time, we were all grown & making a big hub bub of having p'doggies and my daughter woke up from her nap and said sleepily, "I want some puppies"

So if I could eat that way anymore I would make cheater pierogis and just make some great cheesy salty peppery mashed potatoes and fry some homemade noodles and combine it all. Serve once again with sour cream. mmm

[rob7]

The best dough recipe I have found that I can follow (my mother was pure feel and I cannot seem to replicate her's) is from Grant Achatz and was published in the December 2006 issue of Food & Wine:

2 1/2 C all-purpose flour

1 cup sour cream

1 large egg beaten

1 large egg yolk beaten

4 Tablespoons unsalted butter melted

1/2 teaspoon salt

Mix all together, knead until smooth, cover and let rest for 15 minutes.

The filling that I grew up with is a potatoe and farmers cheese filling. Make a batch of mashed potatoe. Add farmers cheese. Usually about 2/3 mashed potatoe to 1/3 cheese. The farmers cheese that we always used was made under the Friendship brand. It is a white, crumbly cheese. To make it easier to mix with the potatoe, I usually put it through the ricer into the potatoes.

Where I live now it's hard to find this farmers cheese. I read at one point that using ricotta can be a good substitute if you drain all the excess moisture and add a bit of lemon juice to give it the tartness that farmers cheese has. I tried it and it worked ok. You canstill tatste a bit of the sweetness from the ricotta.

Edited December 31, 2007 by rob7 (log)

[rooftop1000]

K8memphis

I have you beat on cheater pierogies... There used to be a powdered cheese that you were supposed to put on cubed potatoes and roast them.The whole mess stuck together and was vile. So with the 2nd packet from the box I made potato and "cheese" pierogis with Wonton skins.

They were quite tasty

Tracey

[Pierogi]

OK, now y'all couldn't have thought that, with a handle like mine, I wasn't going to weigh in on this topic.

First off, Jack Sprat, for a first attempt, I think you did damn good. Daymn GOOD. With 50% Polish blood running through my veins, *and* my 100%, first-generation mother watching me, my first attempt looked like something the dog horked up. Rubbery, tough, hard, hockey pucks.

I've gotten better. WAY better.

I actually thought about doing a pictorial of the pierogi fest this year, but they make for very goopy hands, which don't go so well with delicate electronics like a digital camera.

OK......back to the topic. My dough is dead simple. It comes from a cookbook Mom got for a wedding present in 1953, published by "The Polanie Club of America", first edition 1948, titled "Treasured Polish Recipes for Americans". Right now, it's held together with duct tape...........

The dough as I said, is dead simple. Its, from what I can tell, a basic egg pasta dough: 2 eggs, 1/2C water, 2C flour and 1/2t salt. That's it. The instructions tell you to do the classic well technique, where you mound the flour on a boad, make a well, drop in the eggs and slowly cut them in. Sprinkle in the salt and the water and knead 'till firm. And that's how I used to do it. NOW, I've discovered technology, and dump all the ingredients in the Kitchen Aid, mix with the paddle for about a minute, then switch to the dough hook for about 2-3 minutes. Knead it by hand for a bit, sprinkling with some extra flour to keep it from sticking, (maybe 5 min) rest it under a warm bowl for about 10 minutes after that and away you go. Cut the dough in half, and roll out one half while you keep the other under a damp kitchen towel. Cut your circles from the rolled out part, brush the edges with water, plop in some filling, fold over into a half-circle, pat closed with your fingers and follow with a crimp with a fork. I use about a 4" diameter cutter for the circles. Drop them into boiling, salted water, pluck them out when they float and drain. I put them on a large plate, layers separated by wax paper. I can keep them up to a week this way. Personally, I haven't had success freezing them, I think I roll my dough too thin.

Fillings: sauerkraut, chopped onions and chopped mushrooms, sauteed together, bound with a touch of sour cream. Ground beef, chopped onions and chopped mushrooms, sauteed together, also bound with a touch of sour cream. Browned bacon, onions sauteed in the drippings, mixed with mashed 'taters, sour cream and a hit of horseradish. All of the above, of course, with S&P to taste. Yum. YUM. Sauteed in butter after they're boiled. When I was a kid, we sprinkled them with bread crumbs, now I like 'em better with sour cream or sauteed onions or mushrooms as a garnish.

The only time we had the cheese filling was when we served it as a sweet course. It was the ricotta, drained, with raisins, an egg yolk and a bit of cinnamon and sugar. I prefer the savory fillings.

It would simply not be Christmas at my house without homemade pierogies.

[K8memphis]

Way to go, Tracey!

Coupla things, Pierogi, my Polish amigo.

Umm, the recipe I use you don't have to wet the dough before pressing. I'm so not a cook. And umm, Mom froze them unboiled. She froze them a layer at a time. then stashed all the frozen buggers in big bags. Then over time I took over doing the boiling the first day then the frying of leftovers thereon.

Mom's dough couldn't be rolled too thin I don't think.

She'd thump me for that remark.

[Pam R]

We make them and freeze them at work (and at home) all the time. Boil, drain and toss with just a smidge of oil. Single layer on parchment lined baking sheet. Thaw in boiling water (or not) then fry with butter. Meat filled ones are for chicken soup and don't get fried.

[rooftop1000]

The only way I have ever had them is pan fried in oil till quite crispy and golden

I usually make them with chicken cutlets since they can be fried up in the same pan...but I am neither Eastern European or Jewish

tracey

[lcdm]

After trying multple recipes I've settled on this one - my Mom agrees that this tastes almost as good as my grandmothers. The dough is nice and soft.

Enjoy

Lisa

• 1 large egg

• 2 tablespoons sour cream

• 1 cup milk

• 1 cup water

• 3 1/2 to 4 cups all-purpose flour

• 1 cup cake flour, plus more for dusting

1.Using a mixer (with wisk attachment), whisk egg. Add sour cream, and whisk until smooth. Add milk and 1 cup water, and whisk until combined.

2. Switch to paddle attachment and add 1 cup cake flour and about 2 cups flour, and stir to combine.

3. Work in about 1 to 1 1/2 cups of flour. The dough should be elastic in texture and no longer sticky. Be careful not to add too much flour, as this will toughen dough. Place dough in a lightly floured bowl and cover with plastic wrap and let rest while you prepare filling.

3.On a floured surface, roll out dough to about 1/8 inch thick. Using a glass or cookie cutter measuring 2 1/2 inches in diameter, cut out as many circles as possible. Gather dough scraps together, rolling them out again, and continue cutting.

[piazzola]

Yes the sour cream makes the dough more pliable

And yes in my neck of the woods they are called varenikies, pelmeny, perogy or perohy or Jewish name kreplach.

Whatever you call them thay are the national dish of Ukraine along with borscht and krupnik soup or kroupa(barley).

In fact the have an Asian origin or more precisely Turkic/Mongol because they are fried. In my case salo(pork fat or kaiser fleisch and plenty caramelised onions for the savoury ones)

My Siberian friends like them fried in soy sauce. Oh what a surprise! just like Chinese, Koreans and Chinese. Well not surprising at all if you ask me.

I love the ones I make with white cheese and cherries smothered in sour cream.

Edited November 22, 2008 by piazzola (log)

[ElsieD]

I just found out today that the lady who made delicious perogies at the butcher shop will not be making them anymore. Boo hiss. Never having found a commercial brand that was particularly good, I decided to try to make my own. I have gone through this thread and see that some make their dough with sour cream, some use potatoes and some use neither. I would like to make a dough that is easy to handle, the scraps can be re-rolled and the dough itself able to be rolled fairly thinly as I don't like them too doughy. Any advice on what a dough with those attributes would contain? Thanks!

[TylerK]

Ukrainian background on my mother's side of the family, and we tend to make a bunch of perogies around Christmas time every year.  To improve the workability of the dough and help keep it from drying out too fast we usually add some oil to it.  Using lower gluten four or adding something like mashed potatoes will help keep the dough from springing back on you when you're trying to fill it.   Doughs with higher egg content seem to dry out faster, but it does help create a dough with more "chew" if you like that kind of thing.  

 

For the filling we do mashed potatoes with dry curd cottage cheese, sauerkraut and fried onions.  They get served up with my grandfathers heart attack inducing perogie sauce which consists of fried bacon, mushrooms, onions and heavy cream, reduced until nice and thick.  

[MelissaH]

The local Polish Catholic church in town sells pierogi every year with your choice of cheese, potato, or kapusta (cabbage and sauerkraut), both for Fridays during Lent and in August at their festival. Because I wanted to learn from the best, I went and helped the kitchen volunteers several years ago, making literally thousands of pierogi during the week before the festival. They liked the way I rolled dough, which would be delivered to me in the community room by a runner. Making the dough was the exclusive province of the little old Polish ladies (back in the kitchen, where what I presume were wisecracks flew back and forth in Polish) so I can't tell you what went into the dough, other than it was made in the food processor and then set aside to rest before coming out to me and the other rollers.

 

What I can tell you was this: we'd roll the dough on a floured surface, and then cut it into circles with a can that had both ends cut off. To make it easier on our hands, someone had cut circles out of fabric and then sewn elastic into the edges. They looked like the sort of pretty covering you might find on a jar of homemade jam in a store, but they were a godsend when you were cutting dough circles for a couple of hours nonstop. We'd put the circles on a sheet pan that had been covered with a piece of parchment dusted with flour. The flour was ordinary bleached AP flour like Gold Medal or Pillsbury, so I presume that's also what they were using in the kitchen to make the dough. We were told it was OK to reroll the dough once, but no more. When we had a pan full of circles, it would get moved to the tables where the fillers, or "pinchers," sat. The pinchers would then put a ball of the day's filling into each circle, fold the dough over the filling, and then pinch the edges shut. The filled pierogi would get consolidated onto a sheet pan (again, lined with flour-dusted parchment), and the emptied sheet pans would get returned to the rollers, to refill with dough circles. The last step was to send the tray of filled pierogi to a "checker," who would look carefully at each pierog to make sure that all the edges were pinched firmly shut, and correct any openings or pinch shut any holes in the skin: if there's an opening, there's a high probability that the whole thing will open up and dump its filling in the boiling water, which makes a mess (which is a big deal if you're boiling hundreds of them) or upsets the buyer (if they're purchased frozen, to be cooked at home). The cabbage-filled ones are the hardest to close properly, because the strands of cabbage tend to stick out from the center and into the edge that needs to get firmly pinched shut. After each tray of filled pierogi is checked, it's carefully labeled (so that someone who wants kapusta doesn't get cheese!) and put in the freezer until it's needed. Tradition has it that the last tray from each day gets boiled and then fried with onions on the spot, for lunch.

 

The last step of each day, before cleanup, is to prepare the next day's filling. This, again, happens in the kitchen so I don't know exactly what happens, but I do know that mashed potato flakes and farmer cheese go into the cheese filling, the potato filling involves a little bit of cheddar as well as spuds that get peeled, boiled, and mashed (and dried out a tad with more mashed potato flakes), and the kapusta involves bought sauerkraut as well as some of the smaller cabbage leaves left over from making the golabki. In any case, after the filling is mixed, it gets brought out to the table along with a stack of parchment-covered sheet pans and a bunch of dishers with a scoop about the size of a ping-pong ball. The filling gets scooped out (and carefully leveled in the disher before pushing out, to control portion size) into arrays on the sheet pans (I no longer remember the array dimensions, but it was something specific so they know how much they have, and therefore how much dough they'll need to cover them) and stuck in the freezer overnight, because a frozen dough ball is easier to grab and seal in dough. On kapusta filling day, it's also really important to try and push any loose strands of cabbage into the filling ball, so that the whole thing freezes into a tidy mound that's less likely to cause a problem sealing.

 

The whole system's about as efficient as it could get, without adding in any more mechanization beyond the food processors for making the dough. It was from these people that I also learned about using a large drill bit to core heads of cabbage, but that's another story!

[ElsieD]

Thank you Melissa and Tyler for responding. I am making some now and have just made one, cooked it up and ate it to see what it was like. It has some "chew" to it but I don't know if that is because I maybe overprocessed the dough or if it has an egg in it as Tyler suggests. In any event, I am going to make enough for supper then put the dough and filling in the fridge. If we like them this way, I will make the rest tomorrow. If I don't like the "chew" I will try to make a different dough.

[Ania Bielecka]

Hi !

 

I hope I can help with this one, being polish. When it comes to the dough recipe, traditional one is just flour, water (Important: you add warm water!!) and salt . And thats that. Some add one egg, which is what I like to do - it gives nice color and structure. The only situation in which I would add milk or cream would be if you are making sweet taste pierogi, although it wouldn´t be traditional. When it comes to typical taste you are aiming to the more salty taste, and this gives it more of a pancake structure. Of course I understand that some people prefer it differently, and thats understandable. Thats traditional way.

 

Proportions of course depends on the type of flour, the one I know is 300g of F and 200g of water, of a traditional one.

 

In case you add egg, less water is needed. There is really nice and old recipe using the egg and butter:

 

500 g flour
1/4 l of water
50 g of butter (added at room temprature, but not cooked before.
1 egg
2 yolks
1 teaspoon of salt

You first add butter to the flour (you can help yourself with the knife, cutting the butter) just the same as in shortcrust pastry. Add eggs, salt and water (slowly). Work the dough until is is elastic.

 

The typical feeling is: Potato, Friend Onion (loads! as somebody said and black pepper) and cottage cheese. I prefer when there are more potatoes, again you aim for salty and spicy not sweet in taste.

Another with the sour kraut normally is mixed with mushrooms. This are traditionaly made for the Christmas Eve. You probably can get dried forest mushrooms, what I do, is I soak them in water (not too much) for an 1h or so, sometimes more. Then I fry onion, add the sour kraut. I remove the mushrooms from the water and cut them small, add them to sour kraut with the water that has some taste in it. You cook it until the water evaporates, and of course season at the time of cooking. White mushrooms in my personal opinion cannot be used in this case.

 

Making pierogi is also a nice way to use left over meat from the broth cooking (Rosol) but you need to use some spices, as the taste has been given away during the process. Might be an idea to add some strong in taste meat (like lets say liver) and again loads of onion.

 

Another typical feeling less known is Buckwheat with cottage cheese.

 

 

Allthe best,

Ania

[Thanks for the Crepes]

Hello Ania Bielecka,

 

Welcome to eGullet, and thanks for the pierogies recipe. It has piqued my interest to make them homemade, although I have access to good frozen ones.

[Ania Bielecka]

I am happy to hear it :-)

 

And pls if anybody would have any questions around polish cusine I will be happy to answer. My style of cooking is a little more modern, because I traveled a lot and have been living in two other countries (ireland and spain), but I do hold in respect to the traditional cooking and know quite a bit about it.