Saturday, January 15, 2011

Pierogies

Warning: This is a highly visual post.

On Halloween weekend, my good friend Erin and I attempted to make pierogies by scratch. With two people working, which includes talking about it, chatting about life and other things and attempting to figure out what exactly we were supposed to do, it took us around five hours to make a double batch. For reference, a double batch made about 150 pierogies, which sounds like a lot. It's actually not when you volunteer to gift pierogies to male friends who look to pierogies as childhood comfort.

Anywho, my Dad loves pierogies. They were also a comfort from childhood, as I found out when he told my mom he remembered making them with his baba. Thus, I volunteered to make pierogies for my family on Wednesday. The whole process took me about four hours. This shortened time horizon can be explained by not having anyone to converse with, more wine, and only making a single batch (75 pierogies).

For those of you who are not aware of what a pierogie is, it's pretty much a dumpling of Slavic origins. The most common filling is a potato cheese filling--you're probably seen Mrs. T's frozen kinds in the grocery store. Now that you have that bit of knowledge, do you actually know what it takes to make them?

Well I'll show you through pictures! Yay pictures!



The first photo shows the pork filling I made, the initial dough, and in the background there is a pot with potato cheese filling. Honestly, each component is relatively simple, just very time consuming.

After making both the fillings and starting on the dough,



(Potato filling)



Yay dough!

I then floured the dough a bit more and transfered it to an area to roll it out, kneaded it, and rolled it out.



After rolling out, really really really really really thin,



Seriously, it needs to be thin dough. It gets folded over upon itself and to make that amount of dough do that, you need to make sure it's both thin and elastic. Erin and I found this out the first time around and had to do some extra work accordingly. Yes, you might say well why not make more dough per pierogie? Well, that would make them too doughy, especially since you are putting carb inside more carb. It's just overkill that way.

Anyway, after rolling out and cutting into the right shape you can now fill the circles of dough with the filling and fold over to get something that looks like this:



The remaining steps are to cook the pierogies. First, you boil them, and when they float to the top, you can remove them from the water.



To finish, take the boiled pierogies, and sautee them. It gives them a nice finish.



And voila! Finished pierogies in all their pretty perfection for pleasurable dining experiences.



Om nom nom! Traditionally, pierogies are also then served with sour cream, fried bacon and sauteed onions. Many other fillings exist besides the classic potato and cheese, and my pork, such as lamb, just a cheese filling, and buttery cabbage.

2 comments:

  1. nom! my roommate and I have been talking about making some pierogies after we ate the massive amount his mom sent back with him after x-mas break. wasn't sure if it was worth the work or not though....
    you might have me convenced with those pictures!

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