Just Like Nana Does it: Homemade Perogies!

Alright, so Perogies are just about my favourite thing to eat, and even tho they're not Italian, we still have them at my Nana's quite often. Yesterday I finally got around to making some from scratch. Here's how I pulled it off!

The Dough

• 4.5 cups all purpose flour
• 1.5 cups light sour cream
• 3 eggs
• 1tbsp salt
• 2tbsp veggie oil

Put it all in a bowl and kneed it together until it's nice and smooth. The dough is quite thick, but much moister than a pasta dough (like the one I made here). I ended up adding about a third cup of milk as I was going because there was a lot of dry loose flour, but then Alberta's really dry and I find I often have to up the liquid part of recipes.

Once you've kneeded it...by hand mind you....until your arms are dead, and the dough looks like this, wrap it up and let it sit at room temp while you make the filling.

The Filling

I made potato, bacon and cheese perogies...  but as far as filling goes, you can put anything you feel like into mashed potatoes, just pre-cook everything.

Peel and 1/8th 6 potatoes (I used russets which are average size, and peeled them on the couch while watching top model....OMG that girl with her mother, seriously!)

And boil them in salted water, meanwhile I used scissors to cut up a half pound of bacon, and I fried it until it was crispy....this took about the same time as the boiling, coordinated or what?

Once the potatoes were cooked, I drained them and mashed them. Then tossed in the bacon bits, about 2 cups shredded cheddar cheese and a big old scoop of light cheese whiz. I just kept mashing everything together (once again, don't stop until your arms are dying). And seasoned with some onion salt.

Assembly

So as you can see above, I rolled out 1 quarter of the dough to about 1/4inch thickness, and used a glass to cut circles. I spooned on a heaping table spoon of filling. The you have to stretch the dough while you fold it over the filling, trying to avoid any air bubbles while not letting the filling escape. You just pinch them closed. Hard. Twice (no need for like egg wash or anything).
 

As you can see from the above tray, I was paranoid that they wouldn't stay pinched closed, and rolled the edges as I went...this results in a think roll of dough on the edge of the perogy, which I didn't mind but you might. They should stay sealed with just pinching. Also I hate used a rolling pin, so after the first quarter of the dough, I did the rest sheeting it in my pasta machine on the largest setting. Then cut squares about the same size of the circles above...this worked just as well, and way faster too!

Cooking

You can either freeze them raw and cook later, or cook them up fresh, I froze 30, and cooked the other 9. To cook, bring a big pot of salted water to boiling. Mean while. in a small pan, I cooked half an onion, chopped, in a tbsp butter, on medium the whole time I was getting the water boiling and the perogies cooked. Once the water was boiling I gently dropped in the pergies, stir once so they don't stick to the bottom. Then just cook until they float...then an extra minute to be sure. Easy as pie. Scoop them out of the water, add the fried onions and a huge dollop of sour cream and you are good to go!

Now doesn't that just sound like good old fashioned deliciousness?

Enjoy! Ciao!