Pierogies, From Scratch

A weekend ago Ryan and I enjoyed this tasty meal.  There was only one problem with this delicious plate of pirogies.  Can you guess?  They were from the freezer.  While the taste good, and we added our own homemade touches, it was disappointing to know we could probably do this from scratch.

Now the idea was formed, so when the weekend approached, it was time to execute.  First, finding a recipe was tough, and we thought about making it up as we went along, but it seemed like a recipe would be best since we had never made these before.  Then, while looking the recipe up online we discovered that we had two different opinions on these Polish treats.  After some research, it seems Ryan is used to what is spelled pierogi, and has a filling of just potato, then sautéed with onion, and I was thinking of the kind filled with potato and cheese, which comes up often spelled perogi.  I always eat them with the sautéed onions, mostly because that is how Ryan prepares them, but I was still thinking potato and cheese.  After discussing, we decided to go with a pierogi recipe, using just potato filling.  Well, potato, and then cream cheese for the fat, not butter. 

I am going to make a major confession.  Ryan gets all the credit for this dish.  He started and I swore I would be right there.  I was helping a friend fix something, and it took a little longer than anticipated.  By the time I was finished, Ryan was nearly done with stuffing the pierogies.  I must applaud him for hard work.

After boiling 5 pounds of potatoes, Ryan got to work mashing them up and chopping tons, and I do mean tons, of onions for the filling.

 

The potatoes also had a lot of garlic powder and cream cheese.  These just might be the best mashed potatoes I have ever had.

 

Then he got started on the dough.  I had no idea that cream cheese would be a dough ingredient, but it was.  I admit, this was not a low fat recipe.  Next time I think there would be room for alterations. 

Here is when I came back in to help.  We have a limited amount of work space and only 1 rolling pin, so I let Ryan press on with the filling.

 

Since this recipe makes so many servings, we decided to freeze the rest and bag them for later.  This means next time we want pierogies, we can boil up some homemade ones.

 

There was obviously an abundance of them.  Oh, and they are a little larger than you would expect.  They seemed to have taken on a life of their own and just wound up being huge.  We may have gotten carried away, just a little.

  

A-HA! Here is my work.  I pulled out my new mandoline and slices up a TON more onions.

They got even bigger in the boiling water, as would be expected.

By the time they came out they looked like giant Chinese type dumplings.

After cooking up some onions,

we added the boiled pierogies to the pan.

 

Well, there you have it…

 

Pierogies, from scratch!

After all that white wine, we decided to go for a bottle of red.  This we bought at a grocery store near our hotel in Paris, when we went over the summer.  This was a delicious Pinot Noir.  Absolutely fantastic!  If you really like wine, and buy it while traveling, I suggest going to the grocery store.  You can’t be the price, but the trade off would be that you have no idea what you are getting.  Honestly, in France we assumed that with an average priced (that means the average for the store, which was still cheap) wine, we really couldn’t go wrong.

 

You may be new to my From Scratch Weekends series, so I will let you know that we always try to make this meal with a full set up, complete with candles.

Part of my New Year’s goals included to continue with From Scratch Weekends, so stay tuned for more throughout the year.  The idea is that we get to really experience what goes into making the food and now we can say that we have made these foods before.  Last year include some homemade pasta dishes, sushi, and even beer.

QUESTIONS: What was the last thing you cooked entirely from scratch?  What is the one thing you would like to cook from scratch?  Any suggestions for a from scratch meal for us to make this year?