Pierogi Ruskie are stuffed with crushed cottage cheese and boiled potatoes, with the addition of pepper and – optionally – with glazed onions. This is a traditional Polish dish.
The best recipe below! Even beginners will succeed. Perfect dumpling dough and stuffing for “Russian dumplings”.
Russian dumplings (Pierogi Ruskie) are very popular, mainly in Ukraine and Poland. It is wrongly assumed that they come from Russia. This simple and proven recipe for delicious Russian dumplings is my favorite.
Ingredients for the dough for dumplings
- 500 g of wheat flour
- A glass of hot water
- 4 tablespoons of oil
- 50 ml- half a teaspoon of salt
Ingredients for the stuffing
- 300 g of semi-skimmed cottage cheese
- large onion – 300 g
- 500 g of boiled potatoes
- 2 tablespoons of clarified butter
- half a flat teaspoon of salt and pepper
To make dumplings, you will also need: a clean table top or a pastry board for rolling the dough; roller; round dumpling cutter or glass with a diameter of about 7-9 cm; cotton cloth; wide pot; and a colander for catching dumplings.
Dumpling filling
- Peel the potatoes, rinse, put them in a pot, add salt, cover with cold water and bring to a boil. Cook under the lid open for about half an hour or until tender.
- Drain, put it back into the pot and while still hot, mash it thoroughly with a potato masher until smooth, without lumps. Cool the potatoes completely.
- Peel the large onion and chop it up. Or you can use several smaller pieces with a total weight of about 300 grams. Add two tablespoons of clarified butter to the preheated pan. Add the chopped onion and sauté on medium power for about 10 minutes. You can replace butter with delicate oil or your favorite frying oil.
- Crush the curd cheese, with a fork or a press (we do not grind the cheese in a grinder because the filling will turn out to be too thin). Stir in potatoes, season with salt and pepper.
Dumpling dough
- Sift the flour into a bowl, add salt.
- Put the butter in hot water and melt it, gradually pour it into the flour, stirring everything with a spoon.
- Combine the ingredients and place them on the floured board.
- Knead the dough for about 8-10 minutes until smooth and plastic.
- Put the dough in a bowl, cover with foil, set aside for 30 minutes.
- After this time, unwrap the dough from the foil and divide it into 3 parts. Set two pieces aside and cover with a cotton cloth to keep the dough from drying out.
- Roll out one piece thinly on a board or on a lightly floured worktop.
Using a cutter with a diameter of about 7 cm, cut out round shapes for the dumplings. Put the stuffing on the Russian dumplings in the center of the cake. I always give a lot of stuffing. I slightly flatten the stuffing ball in the shape of a roller to perfectly fill the inside of the dumpling. Fold the dumplings in half and stick the sides together. After gluing the joints, I recommend making an additional frill.
Collect the remains of the dough after the dumplings are cut and finally combine them into one ball. Roll out the dough again and cut the circles for the dumplings.
Place the dumplings side by side on the pastry board. To prevent the dumplings from drying out, cover them with a slightly damp cotton cloth.
Place each series in a pot of salted, boiling water. The water should not bubble a lot. Take out the dumplings about 3-4 minutes after they float to the surface. Boil all the dumplings in this way. I got about 60 dumplings.
Fish the dumplings out with a slotted spoon and arrange them on plates. Serve immediately or, after drying, store in containers and store in the refrigerator. You can also freeze it.
You can freeze raw dumplings by placing them separately, one next to the other, on a tray lined with baking paper. Put in the freezer and when they freeze put into a freezing bag and put back in the freezer. We cook them by tossing them in boiling water with salt.
You can also cook and freeze dumplings. In this case, first harden the cooked dumplings, i.e. after cooking, take them out with a slotted spoon and put them into a vessel filled with plenty of cold water and leave for a few minutes until they cool down well. Then drain them well in a colander. Put the drained pierogies into a bowl, drizzle with oil, divide into portions, put into freezing bags and freeze. After defrosting, the cooked dumplings can be steamed, in a microwave, put in boiling water for a while or fried in oil.
The stuffing for the dumplings can be prepared the day before and cooled in the refrigerator.
The number of pieces depends on how thin the dough will be rolled out, on the amount of filling that will fit in the dumplings (the more filling, the thicker the dumplings, but there will also be fewer of them) and the filling (the tighter it is, the easier it is to fill the dumplings).
When you want to eat previously frozen Russian dumplings, just take the right amount of them from the freezer and place them in a pot with boiling water while still frozen. Cook them on low power burner until the dough is tender. If you want to eat fried dumplings, place them on a wide plate. After natural defrosting, you can fry them until browned and serve.
Pierogi Ruskie (Potato and Cheese Pierogi)
Składniki
Filling
- 500 g (Around 5 big) Potatoes peeled and boiled until soft
- 1/2 Tsp Salt
- 1/2 Tsp Pepper
- 2 Tbsp Clarified butter
- 1 Big Onion finely diced
- 300 g Semi fat cottage cheese
Dumpling dough
- 3 cups + 2 tbsp (500 g) All purpose flour sifted
- 1 Cup Hot water
- 4 Tbsp Oil
- 1/2 Tsp Salt
Instrukcje
Filling
- Peel potatoes, and boil them in water until soft. Drain out the water and mash all of the potatoes finely. You can use a grinder, for a more creamy outcome. Add salt and pepper and mix.
- Chop a big onion. Add clarified butter to a non stick pan. Add the onion and sauté for 10 minutes, until they turn translucent. Take it out of the pan and add to the potatoes.
- Grind the cottage cheese, until you will get a smooth consistency. You can also buy already grinded cheese, and use it instead. Add it to the potatoes.
Dough
- Sift the flour through a sieve. Add oil of your choice and mix.
- Add boiling water and salt. Mix it with a spoon and start kneading.
- The dough should become soft and springy.
- Form the dough into a ball and cover in plastic foil. Leave it for 30 minutes to “relax”, in a room temperature.
Making dumplings
- Take the dough out of the foil and divide it into 3 parts. Cover 2 parts with a clean kitchen towel, so it wont dry out.
- Roll one part of the dough out. It should be very thin, but not see-through. Use flour so it wont stick to the table.
- Cut out circles out of the rim of a cup. 8 cm diameter would be the ideal size.
- Take the circle of dough into your hands. Take a scoop of the filling with a spoon and place it on top of the dough.
- Close the dough in half, and pinch the ends, so the filling wont come out.
- Create a ruffle on the edges of the dumpling, by pinching the sides with pressure.
- Bring to a boil a big pot of salted water. Add the dumplings and boil for 3-4 minutes.
- Serve hot with fried onion.
They taste delicious! I have to try more Of polish cousine.