Mushroom and Onion and Potato Pierogies
I'm in the homestretch of my batch cooking bonanza! The freezer is almost full, but I can squeeze a few more dishes in.
During stressful times, I always dream of pierogies. Frozen supermarket versions are a shadow of what a pierogi should be... they've gotta be homemade to be worth it, but they take a while to make and can be kind of fussy. So, I prepped them ahead so that I have them on hand for when my heart really needs them!
My go-to pierogi recipe lately is from Food52. It really is the comfort food of dreams, with caramelized onions and mushrooms and just enough potato to hold it all together.
Planning!
Pierogies take a little bit of extra prep time because the dough needs to rest and the filling needs to cool. Other than that, though they are time-intensive, they don't require much in the way of planning. They're dumplings by another name, after all.
Most importantly, I knew I had to get them frozen on the sheet pan in the freezer before I ran out of sheet-pan stashing room. The freezer is filling up fast! So I made these first this weekend, before I finished my other prep-ahead projects.
The only major adaptation I've made to the recipe is to use less butter in the filling: I use 1 tbsp (instead of 2) to fry the onions, likewise with the mushrooms, and I do not fold any butter into the potatoes. That gives me better control over the fat content of the recipe down the line when it's time to cook these little pillows of yumminess. Also, the recipe calls for 2 cups of full fat Greek yogurt; I bought two serving-size containers of 0% fat Greek yogurt (I've made this recipe before, and it still works), and therefore only used 2 cups of flour, to keep the proportions balanced.
Here's the nutritional breakdown from Fitbit...
I will update this breakdown with whatever I decide to finish cooking and garnishing them with (butter/sour cream/yogurt/whatever) at the time that I cook and garnish them! That's a "later" decision...
Groceries I had on hand...
- egg
- flour
- salt
- butter
- onions
Groceries I had to buy...
- greek yogurt (2 @ $1.39 each = $2.78)
- white mushrooms (2 8oz packages @ $1.99 each = $3.98)
- potatoes (1lb @ $1.29/lb = $1.29)
Total monies spent for the entire recipe: $8.05
Total monies spent for each of these 4 meals....
$2.01 per meal...
Cooking!
There are three distinct stages to any dumpling style food, right?
First comes the wrapper, which is in this case is a tacky dough. It comes together pretty quickly because of the yogurt, but it does need to be kneaded by hand at the end before resting...
Next comes the filling, of course. The reason I love this recipe so much is that it has everything wonderful about pierogies all together in balance at once: fried onions (yum!), fried mushrooms (come on!), and mashed potatoes. I mean, for real, though, maybe I should just be eating that with a spoon...
And then it all gets bundled together into the dough pouches! Like I said, it's a fairly fussy dough, but it is also quite stretchy and forgiving. As it warms up, it gets sticky and can tear which is why the recipe suggests working with it in two rounds. But it pinches right back together! It also doesn't need any "glue" (like cornstarchy water or egg) to seal... it's a self-sealing dough. Nice!