Last week I made store-bought frozen perogies for an easy perogie weeknight dinner. This week I wanted to do the same but make the perogies from scratch. I made the dough and the potato filling the night before. So on dinner night I put them together and cooked them. It makes approximately 3 dozen so I already prepared a baking sheet of perogies to freeze.
Homemade Perogies Recipe:
Dough
- 4 cups flour
- 1/4 cup oil
- 1 level tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp salt
- approx 2 cups of cold water
Potato filling
- 4 medium baking potatoes
- LOTS of old cheddar (+ 1 cup of shredded cheese)
- salt/pepper
- sour cream, butter, cream, or a mixture of the three.
directions
Making the dough
- 1 Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Add the oil and up to 2 cups of cold water to mix until it is JUST wet. It should be hard to mix, not coming together easily. You might need to add quite a bit more water, or hardly any at all. It should look kind of crumbly, not particularly dough-like.
- 2 Let it sit overnight, covered, or at least for several hours. It will become gorgeous and pliable and elastic.
Making the filling
Cook
the potatoes and mash them with tall the other ingredients. Remember to
make them a little saltier, and cheesier, than you would if you were
just making mashed potatoes.
Putting them together and cooking them
- 1 Take about a quarter of the dough and shape it into a ball, then flatten into a disc on a well-floured surface. Roll this out quite thin, about 3 mm. Cut with a round biscuit cutter, likely the largest one in your set.
- 2Take between a tsp and a tbsp of filling and place in the middle of each circle. Stretch the circle closed, into a half-moon shape. Make sure you pinch the edges SO TIGHTLY that you can’t even see the seam. If you don’t do this, they will fall apart in the water when you boil them.
- 3 Repeat this process until they are all made. You can lay them on a lightly floured cooking sheet, separated by wax paper or parchment paper. If you are making a lot in advance, freeze them like this before bagging by the dozen. Cooking is the same for frozen or fresh, frozen just takes longer.
- 4 To cook, bring a huge pot of water to boil, and add the perogies to the water. They will be done in about 7 minutes, when they float to the top of the pot and look light and doughy.
- 5 Drain well, then shake them into a large frying pan that has nicely chopped onions cooked with butter. You can add bacon or I added mushrooms. Serve with sour cream.
