Perogies/Varenyky

1 small onion chopped

1/4 c butter

3 c potatoes mashed

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp pepper

1 c cottage cheese or grated cheddar cheese

Saute onions in butter and add to freshly mashed potatoes.  Add salt and pepper and cheese. You can be creative with the cheese and add different types of cheese if you want. Aged cheese will give the filling a stronger cheese taste, and younger cheeses will be a little more mild. Mash well into the potato mixture. Cool the mixture thoroughly before making perogies. While the filling cools, you can start on the dough!

You can also choose to put the onions on top of the perogies instead of inside the filling, if you want to make the filling a little easier! Here are some other filling recipes you can try!

And, some dessert perogie recipes, because, who doesn’t like dessert!?! Here are blueberry, strawberry and chocolate recipes.

1 1/2 c warm water

3 tbsp cooking oil

1 egg sightly beaten
4 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp salt

In a bowl, combine water, oil, and egg and blend well.  Add  3 1/2 cups of flour and the salt.  Knead dough adding the last cup of flour until smooth and soft. You want to make sure you don’t have any clumps of flour. If you add too much flour, it will get dry and flaky, so make sure you watch how much flour you put in. If you do overdo it, add a bit more water. Get your kids to help you measure out the ingredients, but I recommend doing the kneading yourself. You can let them help you get started, but make sure you finish it.

Put in a lightly oiled bowl and cover.  Let dough rest for 20 minutes.  Once the dough is done resting, you can roll it out on a floured board. It is important to make sure that the dough is rolled out really thinly (about 1-2mm thick). If it’s too thick, all you get is dough. If it’s too thin, the dough will break when you cook it. I had my husband roll out the dough, but my son helped with the leftover dough. Cut circles. I’ve always just used cups to cut the circles. lightly flour the top of a water glass and cut into the perogy dough. Once you start cutting the circles, you can start filling the perogies.

 Now that you have the filling and the dough, you can make your perogies! Take a circle of dough and fill it with about 1 tsp of filling. You want enough dough to fill the perogy, but not too much dough that when you close it the dough gets stuck where you are pinching the dough. The perogy won’t seal if there is filling in it, and will open when you boil it.

Put the filling in the middle of the circle and fold it over in half. I like to pinch the top so that the filling stays where it is and then continue pinching to one side. Once I have reached the end, I go back to the middle and pinch down the other side. Make sure you push hard when pinching the dough so that it is sealed nice and tight. Place the finished perogy on a tray that is covered with tinfoil or parchment paper so that they don’t stick. Here is a video of women sealing perogies, so you can see how it’s done.

Continue this process until you run out of dough or filling. Once you are done, you have two options. Either cook them all and eat them right away or freeze them and eat them later.

Drop perogies into boiling water.  When cooked they will float to the top.  Rinse lightly with water to remove starch.  Toss with melted butter. You can choose to fry them afterwards to give them a bit of a crunch, or you can stop after boiling them. I like to top them with sour cream, caramelized onions and bacon bits! Enjoy!

Special thanks to Rosanne Murynka for this recipe!