Recipes Pierogis

There are many recipes for pierogi dough, often using oil and egg, but my favourite is the simplest of all, merely sour cream and flour. Empty a container of sour cream into a bowl, using the container as a measuring cup, fill it with flour one and one half times, adding the flour to the sour cream, scraping the container clean with a spatula. Mix the flour carefully into the sour cream, continually scraping the sides of the container and mixing this into the contents of the bowl.

Leave this mixture in the refrigerator while preparing the filling. Leaving the dough allows it to rest so that the ingredients fully bond.

Pierogis

Dough

1 part Sour Cream
1.5 parts Flour (if it seems to be getting too stiff before you finish adding all the flour, stop).

Filling

Use 1¼ cups or 1½ cups of flour to each cup of sour cream. Mix dough before peeling potatoes, then chill.

Prepare potatoes.

While potatoes are cooking, roast garlic and saute onions. (To roast garlic, separate cloves and trim off the stem end. Then wrap in foil with some olive oil and roast at 300- 400 degrees for 20 to 30 minutes )When potato are cooked, add butter and cheese immediately while mashing. Then add the other ingredients. Sometimes I use them all, sometimes just a few.

Let this cool a bit. I sometimes put the potatoes into a thick ceramic bowl at this point to speed the cooling process. Have a coffee and relax for a few minutes.

When the potatoes are handling temperature take the dough from the fridge and make the pierogis. (I have a food scale so I weigh the dough. 6 ounces makes 9 pierogis.)

This dough is very sticky so you don't need water to stick it together. After weighing the dough, knead it gently on a floured board (just a few times, you aren't making bread) then roll to about 1/8" thickness. Cut into circles and fill with potato, folding the dough around it and pinching it together.

Save the dough scraps to use a band aids for any pierogis that get tears in them. As I mentioned this dough is very sticky, so this will work, even though it may not look as pretty.

You can reuse the scraps but the pierogis get a bit dry if you use too much. I try to mix the scraps in with some unused dough, about 1/3 scraps to 2/3 fresh dough (it works better if you leave the remixed dough to sit, covered for a while before using.

When the pierogis are formed, put them to dry on a clean cotton cloth (some people will say waxed paper, they are using a different dough, use nothing but cloth) You should let them dry out a bit before cooking them as it is a pasta of sorts. I turn them over when the tops are dry to let the bottom air out.

My Ukrainian friend Shona says that at a pierogi party you would use a double bed to dry them on, and would not start cooking until the bed was full. Then, start cooking the first ones that were made. She also has suggested that when they are made and before they are frozen (if you are making enough to freeze, and you should) you should boil them all, and toss them in melted butter to coat them.

Then, freeze them in bags of serving size. When they are taken from the freezer, just put them in a frying pan. As the butter melts, the pierogis separate and cook pretty quickly.

About Gayle Hurmuses, Editor-in-Chief

A supertaster with a lifelong passion for food, Gayle's training was at the elbow of her Grandfather and at the Broadcast School of the Galloping Gourmet. She made her first pie at 8 years old and was baking bread solo by 10. Gayle has written and illustrated a cookbook, Easy Date Oven, that will be published by CanadianFoodies in early 2012.

Read more about Gayle Hurmuses, Editor-in-Chief here