Potato-and-Cheese-Filled Pierogies

Message Topic Search Topic Options Post Reply Create New Topic Printable Version Translate Topic

   A while ago, Todd was generous enough to share his wife's recipe for pierogies, and gave a brief pictorial:

http://foodsoftheworld.activeboards.net/forum_posts.asp?TID=1626&title=pierogies-wifes-recipe-with-a-brief-pictorial

Since she is half-Russian and half-Polish, I knew that they were authentic, and they looked so good that I really had to try them; and I was finally able to on New Year's Eve. Considering the results, I am very glad that I did! 

There was some work involved, but the truth is that they were very simple to make. The best part is that they tasted really, really good - and the recipe as prepared made a mountain of them, so we had plenty of leftovers for lunches etc. during the following days.

Here's the ingredients list for potato-cheese pierogies, following Todd's lead:

For the onion-butter "sauce:"

2 large onions 
8 (yes, EIGHT) sticks of salted butter
For the potato-cheese filling:

5 pounds of potatoes 
1 pound sharp cheddar cheese
Per "batch" of dough (6 batches total):

2 cups flour 
1 eggs 
1/2 cup of milk
Note: Rather than potato-cheese filling, you might opt for sauerkraut-cabbage filling:

1 22-ounce can sauerkraut 
1 small head of cabbage, quartered 
For sauerkraut-cabbage filling, make 4 balls of dough (8 cups flour, 4 eggs, 2 cups milk)
Slice cabbage thin so it looks like the kraut. Place cabbage in pot FIRST, and add then kraut, juices included, over the top of cabbage. Cook until cabbage is soft. When cabbage is soft, remove lid and turn stove down to a simmer and continue cooking until almost all of the juice has evaporated. Watch as it will burn. Traditional Polish methods for this are to dump the kraut juice and rinse it off to remove the tartness of the kraut. We personally like it with all it’s tarty krauty goodness. It’s up to you. If you do remove the juice, just make sure to replace it with the same amount of water when you cook it.

As said above, for this attempt we made potato-cheese pierogies - here are the goods:

I ended up using one very large onion plus one smaller onion, but things averaged out. As you can see, there's isn't a single complicated thing about this meal - everything for it is probably already in your pantry or refrigerator ~

The first step was to get some prep work done, so I peeled all the potatoes, then cut them into sixths or eights, depending on their size. I also diced the onions:

I then put the potatoes on to boil:

And began melting ALL THAT WONDERFUL BUTTER!

Yes, it looks like a LOT,  but it is good for this recipe, with its onion-infused savouriness. 

When the butter heated up, I tossed in all the onions:

And began cooking them down, melding their wonderful goodness into the butter:

When the onions started to show a little colour, and release their sweet, cooked properties into the butter, I removed the whole mess to a large bowl, so that the pierogies could be tossed in the butter later.

As it turned out, we ended up having a bunch of this left over when everything was done; no worries, we simply put it in a covered bowl and back into the refrigerator. In subsequent weeks, we were able to use this wonderful, onion-infused butter as the beginning for all kinds of savory dishes.

Meanwhile, when the potatoes were tender, I drained them:

And then I mashed them by hand and added all that wonderful cheddar cheese:

As we mashed the cheese into the potatoes:

It was pretty difficult to keep from sampling them ~ don't they looks great?

Next, I turned my attention to the dough; This recipe is easiest when you make 6 separate batches of dough into balls, so following the amounts given per batch of dough, I measured 2 cups of flour and added an egg, and then added 1/2 cup of milk:

I then worked the dough into a smooth, elastic, non-sticky ball, adding a tny bit of flour or milk as necessary:

And repeated the procedure until I had 6 balls of dough:

When all was said and done, there was some dough left over as well, but no worries; I simply rolled it out and cut it into home-made noodles for chicken soup a few days later.

About this time, my good buddy Aaron showed up with his family for a New-Year's Eve visit - just in time to help with the fun stuff! He and his wife, Jane, jumped right in, and I was grateful for the assistance as we began rolling the potato-cheese mixture into small balls about the size of a walnut:

We rolled, and rolled .... and rolled ......... until all the mashed potato was gone. I can't remember exactly, but if memory serves, I believe we ended up with 137 potato-cheese balls.

Next, it was time to start assembling all this - First, put a big pot of water on to boil. 

Let me repeat that: First, put a big pot of water on to boil.

Now that this is done, you can season the water with a moderate amount of salt, and proceed with the pierogies. If the water gets to boiling too early, no problem - you can turn it down while you finish. But it is better to be too early than too late.

When working the dough, we first tried rolling the dough out with a rolling pin:

But it seemed like we weren't really able to get the right thickness for the dough. You want pierogies to be about 1/8-inch thick, and for whatever reason, i wasn't having much luck rolling this thin, so many of the first ones were a little thick. 

And then it hit me - I have a pasta machine!

We decided to give it a try, and it worked like a charm:

I hadn't used it before, so there was a little bit of a learning curve:

But we eventually turned out some very, very good dough with it.

After rolling the dough through the pasta machine, we cut out circles:

3 inches or so in diameter seemed to work just right:

As Todd mentioned, you can cut the dough into similarly-sized squares if you want, and simply fold the dough over into triangles, but since he did triangles, I went with circles to show how versatile this method and recipe is. The leftover dough from cutting was worked back through the pasta machine, re-cut etc., until it was all gone. As we worked, the dough sometimes got a little tough. a teaspoon or two of milk took care of that, and restored the dough back to it's springy elasticity.

Here's the important part - the assembly of the pierogi! It's really quite easy - just set a ball of the potato-cheese mixture on the circle of dough:

Then fold the dough over:

And crimp it down with a fork:

As we worked, we lined up the pierogies on a lightly-floured baking sheet:

And repeated the rolling, cutting, stuffing and crimping work until all the potato-cheese balls were gone. There was about a batch-and-a-half of dough left, but as I said above, no worries.

At this point, you can, if you wish, freeze as many pierogies as you want storing them in vacuum-sealed or zip-lock bags. This recipe makes a LOT, and the product freezes well, so go for it if you want to. 

In our case, since we had a total of 11 people over, with a chance for more visitors dropping by, we simply skipped straight to the cooking step. The water was boiling briskly, so we dropped a few in:

And let them boil until they floated to the top:

Since some of the pierogies were rolled out a little thick, I went ahead and continued boiling a few minutes longer than I would normally have done - no worries there.

After removing the pierogies from the boilng water, simply drop them into your onion-infused butter:

And toss them around a bit to coat.

That's it! You just made pierogies!

In our case, we served them with a Hungarian dish called kolbász savanyú káposztával vörösboros:

http://foodsoftheworld.activeboards.net/kolbsz-savany-kposztval-vrsboros_topic1517.html

This recipe is a simple, rustic way to put sausage and souerkraut to work:

The pierogies were, in a single word, amazing! 

Due to the fresh ingredients and onion-butter sauce, they tasted much better than any I had ever bought, and I can't tell you the feeling of simple accomplishment that came from making these entirely from scratch, start to finish: 

As good as they were, some of the leftovers were even better the next morning when fried in a cast-iton skillet with a little of the left-over onion-butter:

They browned up really nicely on the outside, getting a crispy-soft exterior that was enhanced by the onion in the butter and the cheese-potatoey goodness inside:

All-in-all, my conclusion is simple: if you love Central and Eastern-European peasant food, then you must try these! If you love potatoes and cheese, you must try these! If you love to eat, you must try these! They are definitely worth the work, and can't be beat!