Pittsburgh Pierogies

I shouldn't say "Pittsburgh" Pierogies, I just did a search for "Pierogie recipe" and found one on allrecipes.com, I did modify it a little bit. I made them on Sunday evening, and have enjoyed them twice this past week. Larry gave them the thumbs up! But he did say that he is not really an expert source on the subject, so I think I may still need to modify the recipe.

For those of you who, like me before moving here, do not know what a Pierogie is: it is a traditional Polish (and really eastern European) dumpling. Basically they are a cousin of the ravioli but with different fillings, and a little bit larger.


Aprox. Prep Time: 1.5 hours
Cooking Time: 15 mins


Dough:
3 eggs
8oz Sour Cream
3 cups of Flour + extra for surface
1/4 tsp. Salt
1tbs Baking Powder


Filling:
4 Potatoes
Some milk
A bundle of Chives (or Green Onions)
1 onion
salt
pepper


Depending on how large you make them, this should make 35-45 pierogies.


There are two main components to the Pierogie, the dough and the filling, you can make them separately or you can do them at the same time if you can juggle a kitchen well (like my mother).


Dough: Beat the eggs into the sour cream until you get a consistent liquid. Combine all of the dry ingredients in a large bowl (some people would say that you need to "sift them together," but I don't have a sifter, and that just seems silly) Pour the egg-sour cream mix on to the dry mix, first stirring, then as the consistency changes in to more of a dough, kneading the mixture together. Flour will most likely need to be added to make the proper dough. I think this here it the most crucial step. It takes an experienced pasta maker (someone who I am not) to know when to stop adding flour. Once a nice dough forms, kneed the dough for a while. Separate it, and let it "relax" for a little bit, inside of plastic wrap. You want it to keep the moisture, but it ends up being really elastic.


Filling: This is where you can have the most fun. At some point I will make mexican pierogies. I also want to experiment with Thanksgiving pierogies. Anyways, the "traditional" filling is either potatoes or sauerkraut. I went with the potato route. Boil a pot of water, put peeled and cubed potatoes in the boiling water. After a 4-8 minutes, check to see if they are tender yet. Once potatoes have cooked enough, drain water, add some milk, and mash. For those of you who are experienced cooks you will recognize this as simply mashed potatoes, yep that is it.


While this is going on, chop your onion up in to relatively small bits, then saute them with some oil in a fry pan. Once onions and potatoes are done, throw everything into the potato pot, including the chives, salt and pepper.


With out powers combined: Flour a work surface and roll out a portion of dough. You are aiming for a very thin dough, but make sure that you can still handle it. You are aiming for between 1/6th to 1/10th of an inch. Once the dough is rolled out, cut 3 inch circles (i used one of those little small glass bowls... they have a proper name, but I cannot for the life of me think of it). If you make bigger circles, you will make bigger pierogies, it is a personal preference.


Once you have a whole bunch of dough circles, place a spoon full of filling in each one. Wrap the dough around it (like a taco) and press the (hopefully) touching edges of dough together, press down using the tines of a fork to make a good seal. Keep doing this process until you have used up all of your dough.


Apparently they freeze really well, place them on a cookie sheet, separated from one another. Let them freeze over a night or two, then remove them from the sheet and put in plastic wrap or ziplock bags (at this point they can be crammed in as efficiently as possible).


To cook one of these peirogies, you can either boil them, or fry them. I choose the later. I cut up some onion and pepper, and cook everything in the fry pan with some oil.


When I made them, it was a Sunday evening, right before Bible study I miss-judged my time, so I ended up cutting the process so I could make it to the church. I ended up making 30 or so, but I had more dough that I could have made more.

UPDATE! I have some pictures for you:

Frozen Perogies

Here would be the final outcome!