This is the 2nd of a multi-part post on pierogi. To read it from the beginning, click here. This post contains general instructions for how to roll, fill, and cook them. For filling and dough recipes, click here.
Pierogi must be boiled no more than a few hours after they’ve been filled. Boiled pierogi can be eaten, or they can be refrigerated or frozen. They reheat perfectly.
Ingredients
1 batch of pierogi dough
Flour
1 batch of pierogi filling
Butter
Directions
- Rolling and Filling
- Put a large pot of water on to boil. If it comes to the boil before you’re ready, cover the pot and turn the heat to its lowest setting.
- Cut off a manageable piece of dough (perhaps 1/8 of the batch) and return the rest, tightly wrapped, to the refrigerator.
- Roll the dough to 1/16-inch thickness, lightly flouring as you go if needed. Use a 4-inch diameter round cutter to cut rounds. Set excess “scrap” dough aside.
- Move one round away from the others, and re-roll it (because it will shrink when you pick it up). Measure out 1 level Tablespoon of filling. Lift the round and invert it onto the palm of your non-dominant hand. Spoon the filling into the center. Lay the round on your work surface, and use to hands to grasp opposing edges of the round. Pull the dough up and your hands away from one another to stretch the round. The dough should begin to cup the filling. Press the dough together at the points where you’re holding it. Work your fingers around the dough edge, pulling it away from any filling and pressing the edges together, to begin to seal the dough while guaranteeing that you don’t have any filling in your seal. Crimp the edge tightly between your thumb and the side of your index finger, working your way from one end to the other. (Braid the edge.) Set the pierog aside on a nonstick or lightly floured surface.
- Repeat Step 4 until you’ve used all the rounds.
- Return to Step 3 and repeat as many times as necessary, until you have no more scrap dough left.
- Return to Step 2 and repeat, until you’ve used all the dough.
- Boiling
- Place a knob of butter on a plate and microwave it until it the butter melts. Tilt the plate around to coat the whole thing. Set aside.
- If you’ve turned down the heat under you pot of water, return it to med-high. Use a Chinese spider to gently lower a few pierogi into the water, swirling the water as you do, so that the pierogi a in motion for at least a few seconds. This will discourage them from sticking to the bottom of the pot. Continue to add more pierogi until you have an even layer of them at the bottom of the pot. Allow them to cook, swirling the water on occasion, until at least half of them float to the top. Adjust heat, as needed, to keep the water at a light simmer. Continue cooking for 2-3 minutes. Use the spider to remove as many of them as you can at once, let the water drain from them for a few seconds, and then dump them into a shallow bowl lines with several layers of paper towels. Allow the paper towels to soak up water for a few seconds, and then dump them onto the prepared plate. Carefully (because they’re extremely hot) turn the pierogi over to coat both sides with butter. Allow to cool.
image cred: Potrawy Regionalne
Some Tips:
- Rolling:
- How thin? In the finished pierogi, the dough is going to have two textures: a crunchy exterior (from having been fried) and a soft interior (from having been boiled). If the dough is too thin, it will have only a crunchy texture. If it’s too thick, it will have both textures, but it will also have a heavy, doughy, pasty quality. You want to get the dough thin enough to avoid that heavy feel, while allowing for the two textures. This simply takes practice. Aim to roll the dough to 1/16-inch.
When you’re finished rolling, typically the side of the dough facing down will feel more moist than the side that you’ve been rolling. Place the filling on the moist side, since that side will be easier to seal.
- Filling: Use a level, packed Tbs of filling, erring on the scant side. Trying to stuff more filling in will simply frustrate you, and produce inferior results. If you’re working with a malleable filling, place a Tbs of it the palm of your hand, and squeeze it into a ball. Squeeze a lot of balls and set them aside before rolling out the dough.
- Folding: The hardest thing about making pierogi is to avoid getting filling in the seal. Try this: place the filling on the center of a round. Grasp the round by its edges, with fingers 1 and 2 of both hands, each hand on opposite sides of the round. As you lift the round from the Silpat, stretch it, pulling your hands slowly and gently away from each other a little bit. Stretch it just enough to allow you to get the two bits of dough that are currently being pinched between your fingers and thumbs, to meet one another as you encase the filling, with no chance of getting any of the filling caught in the seal. (If your dough rips as you do this, you either pulled too far, or your dough is too thin.) Once you’ve got it, give that bit of dough a good pinch so that it will hold as you gently pull the edges near it away from the filling, so you can seal them as well. Next, go up and down the entire sealed edge, pressing it quite firmly with your thumb against the side of your 1st finger. Flip the pierogi over and press the edge again. Finally, if you’re fancy, you can braid the edge.
Jeff makes a couple pierogi. And braids them. Very fancy.
Posted by Make It Like a Man on Wednesday, December 23, 2015
- Sealing:
- Getting some of the filling stuck in the seal – even the smallest amount – will ruin your seal.
- To help make a tight seal, you can moisten the edges of the dough with water.
- Don’t use a fork to assist your seal. That makes the Pierogi look like empanadas, which will earn you a bitch slap from your Polish grandmother. The most common method is to give them a serious pinching, two or three times over, and leave it simply at that. That’s a classic. Or you can show off, like Jeff does in the video, above.
Sometimes you just have to zhuzh the shit out of these little buggers to get’m to seal. If you just completely wreck one, getting filling all over it, and you realize there’s no way you’ll seal it, go ahead and try as best you can, and then encase it in another round of dough. I’ll be twice a thick as the others. So yes, it will have that heavy quality. But throwing it out would be sinful. It’ll still be good, just not perfect.
Pierogi will expand as they boil, so don’t overcrowd the pot. Instead, boil them in as many batches as necessary, according to the size of your pot. Boiling softens the dough; if you don’t boil them long enough, they’ll be tough instead of tender when served.
What’s a “Chinese spider?” An Asian wonton strainer.
Note that boiled pierogi will stick to one another and to most surfaces unless you butter them them liberally.
Some people prefer to eat boiled Pierogi. Others prefer to fry them after boiling. If you’re going to fry them right after boiling them, all you need is a quick sauté in butter, and your only aim is to brown them. If you’re frying pierogi that have been refrigerated after boiling, you need to cook them more slowly, because you’re reheating the interior as well as browning the exterior. As an option, you can bread Pierogi before frying them. I’ve read that this is unusual and done only when the filling is sweet – although some people claim exactly the opposite – but my grandmother used to bread all her Pierogi, regardless of the filling. To bread them, beat an egg with 1 Tbs milk in a shallow bowl. Set aside. Crush enough saltines to produce 2 cups of crumbs (or substitute unflavored bread crumbs). Place in a shallow bowl or on a plate. Toss Pierogi in the egg wash (or brush them with it), then dredge in crumbs. Then, fry as directed.
Serving
Regardless of how you prepare your Pierogi, serve with sour cream or melted butter. Pierogi go great with smoked kielbasa (miLam recommends Slotkowski brand) and rye or pumpernickel bread. Smoked kielbasa needs only to be heated through, although browning it is tasty. You can heat kielbasa and fry pierogi in the same pan, at the same time. A half-stick of kielbasa per person is plenty.
Freezing
Boiled Pierogi freeze well. First, let them cool. Then, place them on a jelly roll pan and slide the pan into the freezer. Once the outer surface of the Pierogi has begun to freeze remove them from the jelly roll pan, place them in a freezer-appropriate container (or preferably, vacuum-seal them), and return them to the freezer. Thaw them in the fridge overnight, or place about ten of them in the microwave, and then tell your microwave that they’re 1.1 lbs of meat and that you want to defrost them.
Inspired by: Pierogi, from Traditional Family Favorites, St. Christopher Rosary Altar Society, 1980, pg. 62-66.
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This is super helpful. Thank you!
You’re welcome, Ilene!
My mother would boil the Perogis then put in a baking dish, cover with buttered bread crumbs and bake. Delicious!
Now that’s something new to me! Thanks!