You asked for it! Here is my mom’s pierogie recipe, with my gramma’s recipe for the dough.
Ma Sabol’s Pierogies
Ingredients for one batch: *(yields about three dozen pierogies. IF you decide you want more, do NOT double the recipe itself. Instead, make each batch separately!)
Dough:
1 egg
2 cups flour
1 pinch salt (1/2 tsp)
1/2 cup water (approximately)
Mix ingredients in bowl and add water slowly until dough is right consistency. Knead dough until soft-cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest for about ten minutes aprox.
Roll out dough thin-cut in two inch squares
(But my mom cuts with a round glass)
Filling:*
(This is the filling my mom uses, but there are all kinds of different types of filling. Now, my mom said to warn you that this is very much a guess-she’s been doing it for so long she doesn’t bother measurings and such!)
Aprox. 8 large potatos
1 finely diced onion sauteed in 1 stick of butter (or margarine but butter tastes better)
6-8 ounces grated extra cheddar cheese
Prepare the potatos as you normally would to make mashed potatos-boil the potatos and drain. Add grated cheddar, sauteed onions and butter, then mash.
When cool, take the circles or squares of dough , scoop a small amount of potato filling onto dough square and pinch together tightly. To store, lay them on a cookie sheet, with plastic wrap between the layers and flash freeze them
To prepare:
Boil water-Add pierogies them to hot water until they float to the top, Only cook about ten at a time, do NOT pour out-use a slotted spoon to remove from water-otherwise, if you dump them into a strainer, they fall apart.
Serve with melted butter and sauteed onions over top.
*You can find different recipes for filling. Many people add saurkraut, or what have you. I’m sure you can find suggestions online.
Happy eating!
My Mom makes homemade pyrogy almost every year for Christmas Eve, but not this year, so I have to wait a whole year. And NO one makes them like my Mom!!
Mmm…pierogi. I think my family would disown me if I tried to make it into squares, though. Making the dough is such a pain in the ass, though.
Just as a handy tip, my mother even sometimes cheats when she’s in a hurry. She buys frozen wonton dough, defrosts it, gathers it into a ball and rolls it out again, cutting it out into circles. For a more traditional Eastern European flavor, you can substitute farmer’s cheese for the cheddar (the potato and farmer’s cheese variant are called “Ruskie” – or “Russian” — pierogi.)
You can also fill them with any kind of fruit you’ve got lying around. Blueberries, sour cherries, cherries, etc… Serve them with sour cream mixed with sugar. Other traditional savory fillings are meat (cooked on bacon fat), sauerkraut (sometimes with mushrooms – this is traditional for Christmas Eve), farmer’s cheese, and potato.
You don’t have to change the dough recipe at all. At least in my family it was never changed. But our dough recipe was different than yours. No eggs; just (almost) boiling water and flour. Everybody has a slightly differening dough recipe – some people even use sour cream in their dough.
And, yes, rjk they are quite authentic. I’ve been to Poland close to a dozen times, and here in Chicago you could even buy frozen fruit pierogi at the local Jewel, Dominick’s, or Polish grocery store. It’s not a Polish-American hybrid thing. Fruit-filled dumplings are pretty common in the region. Hungary has its own variety called szlivas derelye, which are similar to pierogi, but diamond-shaped, stuffed with plums, and fried in bread crumbs.
Making the dough is such a pain in the ass, though.