Pelmeni (Meat Dumplings)

Variations

• In broth: serving them in a bowl of their own cooking water is closer to standard in Siberia than the soured-cream version, seasoned with pepper and vinegar instead.
• Fried: boiled first, then crisped in butter — the usual way to deal with leftovers, and it ends up close to the browned face of gyoza.
• The meat: half beef and half pork is the benchmark, lamb is common, and in the Urals and Siberia venison and even bear are recorded. Fish-filled ones have a name of their own.
• How they differ from pierogi: the Polish dumpling is usually filled with something already cooked, stops at the half-moon, and is often vegetarian — potato, cheese, cabbage. Pelmeni take raw meat, join the ends of the half-moon into a ring, and are essentially always meat.
• Their relation to mandu and gyoza: the widely accepted account has them arriving via the Mongols, which puts buuz and mantu midway along that route — the name itself belongs to the manti family. Pelmeni are much smaller and thinner, though, and boiled rather than steamed.
• Make a lot at once: this was food a whole family shaped together by the hundred and stored frozen in an outhouse for the winter. Making far more than you need and freezing them is still the right way to do it.
• What it is served with: the same table as borscht or beef stroganoff — soured cream belongs to all three.

Tips

• Freeze them, and boil them frozen. This is the whole thing, and the point where they part company with every other dumpling. Frozen dough is firm enough not to split in boiling water, and a filling that froze fast gives up less water later. Thawed pelmeni go slack, stick to each other and tear as they cook (freezing and thawing).
• Iced water into the filling. Meat alone cooks into a dry pellet. Added a little at a time and stirred in one direction, the protein takes the water up and it becomes the juice inside. It has to be iced so the fat does not soften while you stir.
• Iced water in the dough too. Cold, the gluten forms slowly, so the dough does not slacken and will roll paper-thin without tearing (dough and gluten).
• The 30-minute rest exists so you can roll it thin. Unrested dough springs back at every pass and never reaches 1.5mm.
• Roll the edges thinner than the middle. Sealed, they double, so an even thickness leaves a rim that stays tough. True of all dumplings and especially visible where the dough is this thin (wrapping and sealing).
• The ring is not decoration. Joining the points of the half-moon spreads the thickness evenly and lets water circulate around the inside, so it cooks uniformly. Left as a half-moon, the folded side lags.
• Floating does not mean cooked. It means the air inside has warmed enough to give buoyancy. Four minutes from the moment they rise is the benchmark, and with raw meat inside it is not a time to trim.
• Plenty of water, at a gentle boil. Too little and the temperature crashes when they go in, and the dough drinks. Too hard a boil and they batter each other apart (heat control).
• Toss them in butter as soon as they are drained. Left bare they weld into one mass within minutes; butter keeps a film between them (butter).
• Do not be shy with pepper. In the filling and again at the table. The filling is deliberately plain, so pepper carries half the flavour (black pepper).
• A splash of vinegar. Acid cuts the fat of the soured cream and the meat, which is why it sits on Russian tables next to the pepper (balancing flavour, vinegar).
• Three months in the freezer. Freeze them on the tray first, then bag them, and they stay separate. Bagged before freezing they fuse into a block you cannot break apart.