Polish Meat Dumplings (Pierogi)

Dough

4 cups of flour

Pinch of salt

1 cup of boiling water

2 eggs

1.5 oz of butter

Mix all ingredients until they make a smooth mixture. The dough with be very flexible.

Filling 

4 lbs of pork

4 carrots

2 roots of parsley

5 sticks of celery

3 cloves of garlic

1 onion

1 bay leaf

Sprinkle of allspice

2 tsp of salt

1 tsp of pepper

*Optional- you can add a couple chili flakes

Method

Cut the meat into a couple pieces.

In a large pot filled with water, cook the meat with the vegetables and the bay leaf and allspice. Cook it until the meat is soft. It took about 1.5 hours for my meat to cook.

Drain the meat.

Run it through a meat grinder. Also grind the carrots and parsley with it.

Add salt and pepper to the meat. Mix everything well.

Roll the dough out. You don’t want it to be too thin or else it will rip and the filling will fall out.

On half of the dough place some filling with a spoon.

Take the other half of the dough and fold it over the part with the filling.

With a cup, cut out circular dumplings.

The dough will stick to itself closing the dumpling, but make sure there are no little holes around the edges.

Do so until all of the filling has been used up.

Place the dumplings in a pot of boiling water and boil them until they come up to the top.

Serve with one of the following toppings.

Toppings

There are two options for the topping.

One, you can crystallize some onion on a skillet and sprinkle the dumplings with.

Two, in a small pot melt half a stick of butter. Add bread crumbs to it until the butter is absorbed. Let it become a light brown color and top your dumplings with it.

*This recipe makes about 40 dumplings depending on the size of cup you use to cut them out with.

Thoughts

Pierogi are very popular in Poland. It is a traditional part of Polish cuisine.  It is a filling and delicious dinner option. They are made with different kinds of fillings. Meat filling is my favorite, but they are also made with fruit, cream cheese, potatoes, and cabbage and mushrooms for Christmas.

I have tried many pierogi recipes and it has been difficult to find a filling that really lived up to my expectations. I finally took bits and pieces of different recipes I’ve found and created it to my liking making the best pierogi I have ever tried.

I hope you enjoy these delicious pierogi. Let me know your thoughts on them!

Enjoy 🙂