Recipe for about 40-45 pierogi, depending on size:
Ingredients:
Dough:
- 2 glasses/cups flour
- 1 egg
- ~150ml water
Filling:
- 3 medium potatoes
- 250g white cheese
- 1 medium onion
- Salt & pepper
Method:
Filling: Cook the potatoes (can even be the day before). Put them in a bowl or pan together with white cheese.
Cut onion into small pieces and fry it in a small frying pan until soft, but not brown. Mix with potatoes and cheese. Make as much uniform filling as possible. My mom uses a meat mincer, but I used this thing to make potato puree, works fine, just as long as the filling has bits of potatoes inside.
Add salt and pepper to taste.
Pierogi Ruskie filling and dough
Dough: Sift flour onto the kitchen table or ‘stolnica‘ (pastry board), make a hole in it, break the egg and pour the water into the hole.
Knead the dough. If it’s too hard, add a little water, if too soft – flour. It should be hard enough not to be sticky and easily rollable into ~1mm ‘placki‘ (patties).
Cut into circles using a glass (or wine glass, as the sides are thinner). The dough that’s waiting should be placed under a bowl, otherwise it’ll dry out (also the scrapes from cutting circles).
Place a circle on your palm, put bit of filling on it (about 1 teaspoon should be enough, it can’t be too much). Then put the sides together, creating a half circle and press tightly together with your fingers.
Pierogi Ruskie divided into patties
Pierogi Ruskie – the finished product
To cook: You need a big pan, so that they have space. Put them in the boiling, lightly salted water and cook until they float on the surface (usually it’s when the water starts boiling again).”
Note: ‘Pierogi’ are sometimes translated as ‘dumplings’ or ‘ravioli’ in English. However, they neither look nor taste like either.
Agnieszka Stasiowska
