This recipe makes a whole mess of pierogis. After boiling them, if you want to freeze them, you can do this on a greased cookie sheet or a piece of parchment paper. Then once frozen, transfer to a plastic freezer bag. Do not freeze them all together in one bag without first freezing on a cookie sheet or they will clump together and be impossible to separate.
Our favorite way to cook them from frozen is to fry in a pan on medium heat and they get a bit crispy on each side.
In these photos, we served the pierogis with roasted broccoli, caramelized onions, and some vegan butter. That’s not included in this base pierogi recipe, but it is delicious! Would love to hear what you serve these with in the comments.
Serves: about 10
Time: 2 hours
Ingredients
For the Pasta Dough:
3 cups all purpose flour plus more for dusting
1 cup water
1 egg
2 tsp olive oil
1 tsp salt
For the Potato Filling:
1 3/4 lb Idaho potatoes
1 head of roasted garlic
salt
If you haven’t roasted the head of garlic, do so now. Pre-heat the oven to 350 F. There are many ways to roast garlic. Anne cuts the top of the head and pours some olive oil over the garlic and then puts this in a garlic roaster in the oven (if you don’t have a garlic roaster you wrap the head in tin foil). Camille peels the garlic cloves and puts them in a cast iron pan with olive oil and puts the pan in the oven to roast. Roast the garlic until golden brown (about 20 minutes if the garlic is bare in a cast iron pan and about 40 minutes in a garlic roaster).
Peel the potatoes (we don’t often peel potatoes, but for this recipe it makes the texture more delightful for us) and cut into large chunks. Boil the potatoes in a pot of very salty water until tender. Once tender, strain and mash in a bowl with the roasted garlic and season with salt.
While the potatoes are boiling, put the flour and salt from the dough ingredients in a large shallow bowl. Make a well in the center and put water, egg, and oil in well. Mix the liquid into the flour slowly until a ragged ball forms. Knead the dough on a flour dusted surface for about 8 minutes, until smooth, elastic, and supple, dusting with flour as needed to prevent sticking. Overturn a bowl on the dough and let sit for 20 minutes.
To shape the Pierogis:
Fill a large pot with water and put it on the stove on high to boil.
Roll out the dough until thin on a cutting board dusted with flour (if you are lucky enough to own a pasta roller this is when to use it). Cut rounds about 3" in diameter (I use a cookie cutter, but a wine glass would work as well). Put between one half and one tsp of potato filling in the center of each round. Wet the edge of the dough with a wet finger. Fold the dough over the potato, forming a pocket and tuck the corners in. Seal closed with your fingers and then crimp the edges with a fork. Once all the pierogis are shaped, drop them one at a time into the boiling water, about ten pierogis can cook at once. Stir the pot with a slotted spoon once at the beginning of cooking to prevent sticking, and allow to cook about 3 minutes. The pierogis should be floating when you remove them from the water. Drain them.
Note: if it feels good to you, you can also start cooking some of the pierogis before you’ve finished shaping so that you are shaping and cooking pierogis at the same time. If this feels hard, feel free to ignore.
Now you can freeze these for later, or cook up whatever you want to serve with them and enjoy!
