Pierogi Made Easy

Pierogi are made with unleavened dough for the dumplings.  They are generally semi circular and boiled or fried.  They are most commonly filled with savory foods such as cheese, ground meats and cabbage.  The Russian variety generally uses a yeast bun that is risen and filled prior to baking.  There is a Russian form of pierogi but it’s called pelmeni, or the Ukrainian variety known as varenyky.

The EASY way…I know I’m getting there 🙂 is to BUY a frozen bag of pre-made pierogi.  This may require a trip to a specialty store, but it’s worth it.

Follow the cooking instructions on the package.  This is usually just to fill a large pot with a lot of salted water, like if you were cooking pasta, and boil the peirogi until they float to the top.

In a frying pan, add some butter and garlic and heat to medium, having the pan ready to add the peirogi.

Have a pie pan or flat pan with seasoned bread crumbs ready.  The smaller the bread crumbs the better.  You can make your own or used pre-seasoned packaged bread crumbs.

Next, carefully remove the pierogi from the pot with a slotted spoon and place into the bread crumb mixture.  The water from the pot will be sufficient for the amount of bread crumbs you want on the pierogi.

Lightly cover the pierogi, they don’t need to be coated, just flip them over a few times in the bread crumbs.

Add the breaded pierogi, as many as you can fit with room to flip over, to the frying pan and fry until the bread crumb mixture is brown.  You may need to add more butter, or use whatever cooking oil you prefer.  I like the taste of butter, but cooking oil is easier for this application.

When they are brown remove with a slotted spoon onto a plate covered with a paper towel to drain excess oil.

Now they are ready to serve.  We don’t usually use a sauce, although a mushroom sauce of any kind is very good.

We usually serve these with mashed potatoes and a salad made of cabbage, beets, carrots, vinegar and sugar.  I’ll get the recipe for the salad for next week.

Enjoy!

Em

 

 

 

My Great Grandma’s Canadles or Canoodles

My Great Grandma Derer called this canadles, like cah-nay-duhls.  She is Czech/Polish/whatever the borders were,  so I was always corrected by German speaking people.  Turned out her dialect was a tad different.  THAT’S how she said it, so that’s how I say it.  She made this EVERY Friday.  I apologize that the recipe isn’t exact.  This is one of those old world foods, and I was taught by watching, tasting, and smelling.  This was accompanied by my Great Grandpa’s schpeck fry, see other post.

You will need:

A large container of large curd cottage cheese, set out to room temperature

A small container of buttermilk set out to room temperature, small skinny container of buttermilk…not a 1/2 gallon or anything.  Smallest  you can buy.

A large pot of boiling, salted water

A large heavy skillet

1/2 of 1 small onion finely chopped about 1/4 of a cup, or less, whatever you get out of 1/2 of 1 small onion

1/2 of 1 small potato, peeled and finely shredded for dumplings just a really small white potato

1 egg

small chunck of slab bacon finely copped, about 1/4 of a cup, NOT regular bacon from the store, you can get REAL slab bacon at the butcher or any German/Polish store

You want the bacon and onions to be approximately the same size when chopped.  Like little rectangles.

About 2 cups of flour, add more if too thin, add more water if too thick.

water

You will need to make the dumplings first, this takes time and patience.

Mix flour and water, egg and potato to the consistency of thick pancake mix.

Use a regular teaspoon, one you would eat with, gather some of the mixture on the spoon, about a 1/4 of the size of the spoon and drop into the boiling water.  You want the dumpling long and skinny, but small  ..the size of your pinky finger.

Keep doing this until all of the dumplings are made.

They are done when they float to the top, you don’t need to remove the one’s that are done, just keep going until all are made or it’ll take you the rest of your life to finish 😉

Drain and rinse with cold water, just a quick rinse to rinse off the starch, not a lot, you don’t want to make them “cold”, just taking the slickness off of them.  You’ll see what I mean.

Add room temperature large curd cottage cheese to dumplings, mix together, set aside

Now you will need to:

Heat frying pan on medium heat

Add finely chopped slab bacon

Add onion

let onion and slab bacon cook until onion is translucent and soft, do NOT drain bacon fat from skillet.

Take skillet off of heat.  You are going to add the buttermilk, but you don’t want it to curdle so the temperature needs to come down to warm.  If it’s too hot the buttermilk will curdle and you are done, there’s no saving it.

Once the pan is warm slowly add the room temperature buttermilk to the pan and stir

Now add the bacon/onion/buttermilk mixture to the bowl of dumplings and cottage cheese

Stir

*note: you will know immediately if you made this right by the aroma that wafts up as soon as you add the bacon mixture to the dumplings.  It’s a tangy, bacony smell that is unforgettable..at least to me..wish I could add “smell” to this post.

Serve immediately.   It won’t be hot, but it will be warm enough to eat and not taste like it’s too cool.  Work fast after the dumplings are done!

This is not a food you can re-heat, well you could but it tastes like crap if you do, so enjoy it right away!

Another old-world recipe from my family.

Em