Pierogi are half-moon shaped dough parcels boiled in salted water and often browned in butter afterwards. The best known variant is called pierogi ruskie, and the name confuses almost everyone who meets it for the first time.
Ruskie does not mean Russian
Pierogi ruskie has nothing to do with Russia. The name points to Ruthenia, a region that before the war lay in Poland and today is mainly western Ukraine. After 1945 many Poles moved from there westwards into Poland and took the dish with them. Before the war, Ukrainians in the same area called the variant Polish pierogi. Translate ruskie as Russian and you lose the whole origin of the dish.
That has practical consequences for the filling. Pierogi ruskie is boiled potato and twaróg, a fresh, tangy Polish curd cheese closest to quark. It is not mashed potato with sour cream. The acidity in twaróg is what carries the butter and onion on top. We do not carry twaróg, so we will be honest here: quark or well-drained cottage cheese comes close. Potato and cream will be something else.
The dough
The dough is flour, warm water, a little oil and salt. Egg is optional and makes the dough firmer. We carry flour.
- 500 g plain wheat flour
- 250 ml warm water
- 1 tbsp oil
- 1 tsp salt
Knead for eight to ten minutes, until the dough is smooth. Let it rest covered for at least 30 minutes. The resting time is not decoration: without it the gluten contracts as you roll, and the parcels turn tough and crooked in the cooking water.
Two fillings
Ruskie: 500 g boiled, mashed potato, 250 g twaróg or quark, one finely chopped onion fried soft in butter, salt and plenty of pepper.
Kapusta i grzyby: sauerkraut and mushrooms, the traditional Christmas variant. Rinse 400 g sauerkraut, squeeze out the water and chop it. Soak 30 g dried shiitake or other dried mushrooms for 20 minutes, chop them, and fry everything together with onion until the liquid has gone. Caraway belongs here, and you will find it in spices.
Shaping and cooking
- Roll the dough out to two or three millimetres. Cut out circles of about eight centimetres.
- Place a good teaspoon of filling in the middle. Do not overfill, or they will split.
- Fold together and pinch the edge firmly. If the dough is dry, moisten the edge with a fingertip of water.
- Boil in plenty of salted water. They are done about one minute after they float to the surface.
- Lift them out with a slotted spoon. If you want to brown them, do it in butter afterwards, not instead of boiling them.
Serve with melted butter, fried onion and sour cream on the side. If you want to make more Polish food, we have bigos. We compare the techniques for dough parcels in general in the dumplings guide and in the recipe for dumplings from scratch.
Frequently asked questions
What are pierogi made of?
A simple dough of wheat flour, water, oil and salt, filled with anything from potato and curd cheese to sauerkraut, mushrooms, meat or berries. The dough contains neither yeast nor baking powder.
What is pierogi ruskie?
The variant with boiled potato and twaróg. The name comes from Ruthenia, not from Russia, and the dish is considered Polish.
How do you cook pierogi?
They are always boiled first, in plenty of salted water, and are done about one minute after they float. Browned pierogi are boiled pierogi that have been fried in butter afterwards.
What is Polish pierogi?
Pierogi are Polish in the sense that they are a cornerstone of Polish cooking, with their own variants for Christmas, for fasting and for everyday. Similar dough parcels are found across Eastern Europe and in Asia, but the shape, the dough and the fillings set them apart.
