Weekend Project: Pierogies

Most every weekend, I take on a big cooking project. Something that is harder to get done without my husband for back up. I've been seeing pierogies on sale at a few places lately, but haven't bought any. I was thinking about that this weekend when I decided to make some from scratch. A friend of mine had posted on her facebook a while back about making them, so Christian and I started our pierogie journey.

Christian, although he had never made any sort of dough, bread or otherwise, wanted to get started, so he started with this:

• 2- 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 1 tablespoon butter, melted
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1 egg
• 1 egg yolk (Save the white to throw into an omelet on another day!)
• 1 tablespoon olive oil

He mixed the flour and salt together, and then whisked the wet ingredients together. He tried to whisk the wet ingredients into the dry...but this wasn't working for him, so he received his first-ever kneading lesson from me! It worked much better this way...then the dough was covered and allowed to rest for 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, we made our own mashed potato filling. We mashed cooked potatoes, added some butter and sour cream, along with salt and pepper...and then, we decided to stir in some perfectly caramelized onions and sliced garlic. Most delicious.

The longest and most time consuming part....rolling out and filling the dough. We rolled out the dough into a thin sheet because we do not have a pasta-sheeter. Then we cut out rings using a biscuit cutter. We plopped a bit of filling onto each one and pinched the edges closed before crimping with a fork. It took a while to get this down pat, but once you're in a good rhythm, it is quite fun. Christian also made some extra large pierogies by placing 2 full dough circles on top of one another instead of folding and pinching.

Before long, we had a big cookie tray filled with fresh pieorgies. While we were cutting/filling/pinching, we had brought a large pot of water to a boil, so we gently put the pasta in. I will be honest, I was somewhat expecting the filling to come out of some, but this didn't happen! We boiled them for a few minutes, just until they floated...then we drained them, let them dry for a few minutes, and sauteed them in a little melted butter. Just a little was just enough! As you can see below, they're not swimming in a sea of butter. You can also tell which ones I made and which ones Christian did....haha...



Served with some crispy sauteed cabbage (which I boiled in some homemade vegetable stock before suateeing)...mmm...it was such a treat. And working together to cook something scrumptious with my husband and juggle taking care of kiddos...just as much of a treat!

I'm Still Here

Sorry for the stint of silence, folks. I've been in kind of an emotional funk for a few weeks, which sometimes makes it difficult for me to write coherently.

I've noticed some cooking trends in my house, though, and I thought about making regular posts about these...who would be interested in the long cooking projects I tend to start on weekends and the crockpot recipes I make every Monday?

This weekend it was peirogies from scratch, the weekend before it was beer braised beef roast, the weekend before that it was cooking a lot of stuff for Emma's baptism as well as homemade hotpockets....you get the idea...

As for Mondays, they're usually busy evenings for us, so I try to use my crockpot on Mondays so that we can still have a healthy, home cooked meal....

Still trying to get myself out of this rut...funny how it took me so long to figure out that perhaps writing could be uplifting and give me other things to think about...