In honor of my husband’s Polish background, I tried my hand at making this Central and Eastern European dish – pierogies. For those who don’t already know, they are similar to dumplings and are typically filled with potatoes and cheese, sometimes meats and other veggies like onions and mushrooms. They’re slightly bigger than a typical dumpling, are wrapped in a dough that is reminiscent of pasta dough, and are usually served with sour cream.
Making the Dish
For this dish, I followed a recipe by the great Andrew Rea, or Binging with Babish. While the ingredient list is short and accessible, the recipe itself does take various steps, multiple pots and pans, and delicate fingers. Unlike the recipe, I opted to only do potato cheese fillings and used store-bought sour cream rather than making it from scratch. I was surprised by the use of cream cheese instead of shredded cheese like many other recipes, and did a comparison between the two which showed that the cream cheese created a smoother consistency. If you plan on making these, I do recommend enlisting some help with the folding of the wrappers and covering the wrapper dough so it doesn’t dry out while doing so – I found that when the dough dried out, it was harder to pinch the wrappers closed which was remedied by multiple rounds of pinching and squeezing. As most pierogi recipes indicate, you can boil then fry them or just boil them, but I personally like the browned crispiness from frying after boiling.
Eating the Dish
As an Asian, I naturally compared my experience of eating a pierogi with eating a dumpling. The pierogi wrapper was bouncier and thicker than that of a dumpling (admittedly, I might have not made it thin enough). I love mashed potatoes in general and the filling is basically a cheesier version. I do recommend to season the filling well otherwise it might end up being bland. Even though I am not the biggest fan of sour cream, the cool creaminess paired well with the savory pierogies.
Summary
Taking a bite of my pierogies led me to exclaim, “Yup, that was worth it.” As always, the video recording and photographs slowed down my cooking time, so it basically took me a whole afternoon to make these, but I found it worth the effort. Next time, I would try to make a larger batch to make it even more worth it and save them in the freezer. I had ended up putting my leftover pierogies in the fridge and steaming them before eating which was still a pleasant experience. For those in the Austin and surrounding areas, you can purchase some from one of the vendors at the Mueller Texas Farmer’s Market who sells them with lots of different fillings, including bags of frozen ones to take home.