Pierogi (Dumplings)

Variations

• Pierogi ruskie: Potato-and-cheese filling — the most popular.
• Pierogi z mięsem: Filled with minced meat.
• Pierogi z kapustą: Cabbage and mushroom (a Christmas staple).
• Sweet pierogi: Fruit fillings like blueberry or strawberry with sour cream.

Tips

• The filling is already cooked, and that cuts the boiling down to one job. Pelmeni draws the line: pierogi are "usually filled with something already cooked", while pelmeni "take raw meat". In pelmeni, mandu and buuz the water is doing two things — cooking the wrapper and bringing raw meat through — and it is the second that sets the floor on the time. Here there is only the first, so they are done the moment they float and there is no reason to give them longer.
• The commonest cause of bursting is also answered before you start. Wrapping and sealing puts it plainly: a dumpling bursting "looks like a sealing problem and it usually is not — heat turns the water in the filling to steam, the volume jumps, and the pressure pushes out through the weakest part of the seam", so the order is fix the filling, then seal it. A potato-and-cheese filling cooked and cooled has already lost that water and set its starch. Which is why "pinch dry and tight" below is the whole of what is left to do — and why this filling sits at the opposite end from the over-90%-water raw vegetable fillings that guide warns about.
• It is also why boiling them straight from frozen works. Nothing inside has a core temperature to reach. The only thing that has to happen is that two or three millimetres of dough cook through, so frozen costs a minute or two and changes nothing else.
• And the pan-fry afterwards is a second cooking only a cooked filling can take. Butter and a hot pan would drive water out of a raw filling and leave it dry. Potato and cheese have no water left to lose, so all that is left to happen is browning — which is also why leftover pierogi are better fried than warmed through in water again (reviving leftovers).
• Knead well and rest the dough so it rolls thin without tearing.
• Pinch the edges dry and tight so they don't burst while boiling.
• Don't crowd the pot — they'll stick together.
• Pan-fry after boiling for a crisp outside and soft inside.
• Freeze extras and boil them straight from frozen.