Good God there are a lot of ways to spell Pierogie. For my sanity, I will use the Pierogie spelling in this post.
As a Clevelander, although I do not come from any Eastern European heritage, I consider the pierogie to be a family dish. My family cooked pierogies every way imaginable: sauteed, baked, fried and even grilled. One thing we rarely had though was homemade pierogies. On the way home from Melt a few weeks ago I decided that I was going to make pierogies from scratch. And you know what, it was pretty easy.
The first thing you need to do is get together a pierogie dough. The recipe I used is a bit of a mashup from a number of recipes I found online:
Pierogie Dough Recipe
- 2 1/2 C Flour
1 t Salt
1 Egg
2 T Sour Cream
1/2 C Water
1. In a stand mixer, mix the flour, salt, egg and sour cream.
2. Add the water a bit at a time until the dough starts pulling from the sides of the bowl. You should have something that looks like this:
3. Wrap that bad boy up in plastic wrap and let it kick it in the fridge for awhile. This is a great time to make your fillings if you haven’t already. Typical pierogie fillings include potato, cheese, onion, sauerkraut and prune. I don’t know who the hell likes prune, probably geriatrics. We went with potato & cheese and mushroom.
4. Now comes the part that makes you realize a $2 pierogie is totally worth it. The rolling and stuffing. Go get your dough out of the fridge and using a pastry cutter, cut yourself off a manageable piece. Start rollin’ that mo’ fo’ thin. Real thin. I’m a lazy bastard so I used a pasta maker to get it down where I wanted it. You’re going to want it about this thin:
You are going to eventually have to use something to cut circles out of the dough. I have a circular cookie cutter that I use for empandas, so I used that. You can use whatever you want though: a cup, bowl, scissors, used margarine container, slinky. Doesn’t matter. Like this homie:
5. Now comes the stuffing insanity! Yeah! Its pretty straightforward, you put the potatoes in the dough, seal up the edges and crimp. Easy, peasy, japaneesy. Thanks to the magic of the Internet though I can show you in pictures.
Although you may be tempted to eat these at this point, don’t. They are better cooked. After 3 or 4 minutes in boiling water you will have a colander full of the best pierogies you have ever had. They can also be sauteed, I do mine in a pan with a little butter and some garlic. Wicked good!
Its gonna be hard to eat all of the pierogies you made so you’ll probably want to put some in storage. They will last a week or so in the fridge, but for long term storage the freezer is the best option. A lot of recipes call for boiling the pierogies before you freeze them, but this doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. In addition to being one hell of a sticky mess, it seems like an awful lot of work for no real benefit. I laid mine out on wax paper, rolling after each row to avoid them from sticking to each other and put them in a zip-top freezer bag.
Tags: Perogie Recipes, Perogies, Pierogie Pastry, Pierogies from scratchSome other posts you might enjoy:
- Basic Empanada Dough
- How to Make Cavatelli Pasta By Hand
- Cheese Crackers - Make Your Own and They’ll Taste Like Cheese
- How to Make Homemade Corn Tortillas
- Deep Fried Pork Butt
January 6th, 2008 at 8:40 am
De tittene mektige tasty.
January 6th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
now that you have all these friends hanging out in the freezer, you have something quick to feed the wifey while she is complaining that her homemade 3 course meal is taking too long.
ha!
they look great. yum.
January 6th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
Wow, they look delicious! Pierogies are one of those things it never even occurred to me to make from scratch.
January 6th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
Your nails look really good in that second picture!
January 7th, 2008 at 4:17 am
I credit my great nails to Burt’s Bees Cuticle Cream, simply magical.
January 9th, 2008 at 8:36 am
I will have to try this, it looks great. I have tried homemade pierogis from different stores in the Slavic Village area and one in a certain well known market, but nothing beats Sophie’s Choice Pierogis. They make and sell them at this corner store in Garfield on Turney Road called Peter’s Market. They have so many flavors, sweet and savory, and they are actually pretty healthy nutritionally (perpetually dieting, gotta make sure I don’t eat too many). They’re fully-cooked too, last time my friends and I had a bonfire we warmed them up on our metal skewers (along with gourmet apple chicken sausage…Cleveland foodies)! Thanks for the recipe. A little fruit stand near me sells pouches of kolachky filling, I think I will try your dough and stuff it with that.
January 9th, 2008 at 8:39 am
Oh, P.S-I have seen the prune pierogi before too and passed over them, but a friend had them for the holidays and swears they were great. I guess they use a “prune butter” and not really whole dried up prunes. I have to keep remembering that prunes were plums at one point!!!
January 12th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
Mark…because the wing comments were closed…i googled “wings in mayfield ohio” and the number 1 listing was eating cleveland.com. I was happy indeed. Patti and I are looking to get wings this evening and now i am puzzled as to where we should go. I think perhaps your number should be listed in instances like these. However you are the unreliable brother of the day so we will eat unfavorable wings now. I will see you tomorrow when you get your hair cut by the best stylist in the land.
January 12th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
(you shouldn’t take credit for your nails assuming you do bite them until the free edge is gone and your fingers swell)
January 16th, 2008 at 1:54 am
I think the second picture of someone using the cookie cutters must be your ‘old lady’. Does she know you refer to her like that. Really she is the best thing to ever happen to you.
P.S. Your website is very informative as well as entertaining.
January 16th, 2008 at 4:10 am
I’m considering blocking the last two commentors for unruly behavior.
February 1st, 2008 at 8:38 pm
Yo Mark,
Recipe looks awesome. I’m about to embark my first pierogie making missing after years of waiting for my Grandmom to get off her lazy ass or trolling the Polish markets in Philly. I’m sure these will be hit of the Super Bowl party I’m going to.
p.s. Great move with the pictures. Was worried about how thick / think to roll it out.
February 26th, 2008 at 8:28 am
I just made some homemade pierogies last night. For the dough I just used flour, salt, oil, and water.
I rolled dough out real thin and cut into squares, not circles.
Just what I did, not saying this way was better or anything… enjoy
May 6th, 2008 at 7:31 pm
You just haven’t had the proper prune filling. My Mom Annabelle, she is no longer with us, made the best filling that I can recall. I’m sorry to say I do not have her recipe. Here in Washington Statea they are not a daily staple. Here it is fish and Starbuck’s.
August 2nd, 2008 at 6:58 am
I grew up in Southwestern Pa- and this was a typical family meal for us. Though the potatoe and cheese is good….the prune ones were always my favorite. Just boil some prunes til soft, and use them as the filling….they come out very sweet and tasty! My aunt used to make tuna ones as well. For the potatoe ones, cook mashed potatoes with cheese……..and they are yummy!
After our are boiled, we brown some butter with onions , but the butter and garlic sounds good as well. Hope if no one has ever tried them….that they do…they are delicious!
August 2nd, 2008 at 12:24 pm
@ Lois
Oh dear God! Tuna perogies? That is truly unholy.
September 14th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
okay I have never even heard of these…came across your website searching for sorbet. Gonna try both. This perogi business looks good…kinda like an empanada? Anyway, you are funny, you say what I am thinkin’ when I cook.