Pierogi

Ingredients:

1C Flour

1 Egg

1/2 t salt

4T cold water

Instructions:

Mix all ingredients with enough water to make a soft dough. Work dough until it does not stick to the bowl. Cover lightly with flour and let rest for 15 minutes. (SECRET:  add some of the potato (assuming you are filling with potato) to the pasta dough or sour cream can be added to the dough mixture. Both tend to lighten the dough.) DON'T MAKE IT TOO LIGHT OR YOU'LL END UP WITH PEROGI SOUP (which still tastes good).

Roll dough out thin. Using a glass dipped in flour, cut circles in dough then add 1T filling, fold in half, pinch edges together and make real secure so filling can't leak while boiling.

Filling:

1 large potato, peeled, cooked and mashed. Add a pinch of dried dill, one egg yolk, salt and pepper to taste, mix throughly.

There are any number of fillings for these luscious little dumplings so I will not attempt to share them all with you. Below is the traditional Polish potato filling, but, please try others too. Perogi will soon become a staple in your house.

Bring pot of water to boiling, add stuffed perogi a few at a time and bring to boil again until perogi floats then cook 3-4 more minutes. Now, I differ immensley with most recipes on how to drain. Do use a collander, DO NOT put perogi on top of each other to drain they will stick! Drain in collander one at a time if you have to then remove from collander and place singularly on waxed paper, foil, whatever. Once cooled, perogi can be placed closer together or even layered to put in a freezer container/bag and freeze.

Interesting:

Pierogi are probably the only Polish dish that has its own patron saint. "Święty Jacek z pierogami!", (St. Hyacinth and his pierogi!) is an old expression of surprise, roughly equivalent to the American "good grief" or "holy smokes!". The origin of this expression is unknown. 

Pierogis take a little bit of work, but every bite is worth it! I have had great successes and failures with Pierogis, but what fun to make and richly rewarding when the recipe comes out right - boil or fry with any stuffing you can create!

Many spellings:  perogi,pyrogy, perogie, perogy, pirohi, piroghi, pirogi, pirogen, pierogy, pirohy, pyrogie, and pyrohy.

In Polish pierogi is actually the plural, pieróg being singular.

1)"07559 pierogi ruskie, sanok" by Silar - Own work. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:07559_pierogi_ruskie,_sanok.jpg#mediaviewer/File:07559_pierogi_ruskie,_sanok.jpg