Pierogies

My friend Hollywood has a suggestion for a blog that I am totally up for tonight - PIEROGIES!  It involves making pasta, so this blog is getting hard fast (!).  Either way, I am pushing forward with this effort.

The store brand: Cheemo Potato and Cheddar Pierogies - frozen pierogies may be the only kind I've ever eaten.  A college staple that I've stood by... I'm a little nervous to challenge it's good name.

The recipe is taken from Foodnetwork.com:

• 2 cups flour
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 egg
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 large potatoes
• 8 ounces sharp-tasting cheese
• salt and pepper

Directions:

- Mix flour, water, and egg and salt together. Knead on a lightly floured surface until smooth. Cover dough with bowl and let rest for 30 minutes.

- Boil potatoes until soft. Drain and rinse. Add cheese. Let stand a few minutes until cheese melts. Then fold potatoes and cheese together. (I actually lightly mashed the potatoes with a masher and then stirred the cheese in) 

- Roll out dough about 1/8-inch thick. Cut into 3-inch squares. Fill each square of dough with one teaspoon of potato and cheese filling. Fold in half and pinch ends together to seal. (I used a round cookie cutter - I think 2.5 inch)

- Drop in hot boiling water and simmer for 8 minutes.

- Drain and fry in butter a few minutes until heated through.  Salt and pepper, to taste.

So how did they turn out?  Mine is on the left:

Maybe it was just that the Cheemo ones had been in my freezer for a while, but the pasta was hard.  The filling was bland - husband and I were saying that you couldn't even tell it was cheddar (not that "cheddar cheese" was a listed ingredient).  I liked that the homemade pierogi filling had texture since I left the potatoes chunky.  The dough was soft with a little crisp from the pan fry.  They were SO. GOOD.

As a note, once they were both pan-fried in butter, I stirred them in with mushrooms, onions, and cabbage that I had previously pan fried in butter and garlic.  Just top it with parmesan cheese and parsley.  They were FAN.TAS.TIC:

So, how does the cost compare?

	Count	Cost	Cost/Pierogi
Cheemo Potato and Cheddar	14	$      3.00	$            0.21
Homemade	30	$      3.90	$            0.13

My recipe made a LOT of pierogies - I actually packaged half up and froze them (after a quick 2 minute boil).  Now I have my own frozen pierogies and they cost a lot less.  They did take quite a while to make - about 1.5 hours from start to finish, but next time they will be easy peasy from the freezy.

Bake or Buy? BAKE!