How to Make Potato-Cheddar Pierogi at Home

[Music] before the first world war roughly two and a half million polish immigrants arrived here in the u.s and many of them moved to pennsylvania to work in the state's booming coal and steel industries in fact by 1920 a third of the workforce in pittsburgh were polish americans so it's no surprise that pittsburgh is known for their polish food including kielbasa bagels and pierogi those little dumplings filled with potatoes and that's what brian is going to show us how to make today now brian you actually went to pittsburgh to learn how to do it right right i learned how to eat a ton of pierogies what i learned so we spent time with restaurateurs with home cooks and we learned how to make pierogies i learned that there's many different types there's those that are filled with jalapenos and bacon and sauerkraut and dried prunes with all manner of things but the basic recipe we're going to make today is cheddar cheese and potato so we're going to start with the potatoes so i have one pound of russet potatoes now why are you choosing russets over any other kind of potato because russell's will give us a lighter fluffier texture we'll slice the potato in half inch thick slices and that's a good idea whenever you're cooking potatoes take mashed potatoes or what have you to cut them into slices rather than cubes because they'll cook through more evenly we'll combine all the potatoes in the pot with a tablespoon of salt and we'll cover that with water by about one inch we'll bring this to a boil and once that comes to a boil we'll reduce the heat to medium and we'll cook it at a strong simmer until the potatoes are very tender okay julia so the potatoes have been boiling for 15 minutes so we could take a peek and see that they're fully tender we'll just go over here and drain these off okay now we can drop the potatoes straight into the stand mixer so these are still really hot yeah and that's an important thing here because we're going to combine them with the cheddar cheese and the butter and you want to make sure they're hot so they fully incorporate and melt both those items so one cup of sharp cheddar cheese two tablespoons of butter a half teaspoon of salt and a half teaspoon of pepper so we're going to mix this for about one minute until it's fully melted okay that smells good right we want to chill this while we make the dough the quickest way to do that is to put it in a nice shallow dish like this eight inch square baking pan we're going to drop this in the refrigerator and let it chill for at least 30 minutes or up to a full 24 hours [Music] so while the filling chills we're gonna turn our attention to the dough this wonderful woman named elaine kitlowski in mount lebanon pennsylvania took us into her home for a day and taught us how to make pierogies based on her grandmother's recipe now she uses the combination of all purpose and semolina flour which makes it a relatively high protein dough so it's nice and elastic rather than call for two different types of flours we settled on bread flour which has a higher protein content than all-purpose flour right so we have two and a half cups of bread flour here we're going to add one teaspoon of baking powder one-half teaspoon of salt we'll just whisk this together to combine it we can go ahead and add one cup of sour cream this is a pretty interesting dough right we're adding fat and richness without adding too much moisture to it so you'll find when we're done mixing this up that the dough is extremely easy to work with if you have favorite doughs in life which i never thought i'd say this is going to be one of my favorite doughs really this is your favorite type all right favorite i don't know what else to do with it besides make pierogies but that's a good start so one whole egg and one egg yolk we're gonna fit the mixture with a dough hook and we'll mix this on medium high speed for about eight minutes until the dough really hydrates and it gets nice and elastic okay julia the dough has been rested for at least 20 minutes here you can see how nice and i got to touch it yeah it's nice and pliable isn't it that's going to be a good dough to work with so we're ready to roll this out we want to start with a little bit of bench flour you don't want to over flour this board because the perogies are going to seal without the aid of water so too much flour prevents the seal from happening we want to start off by rolling this into an 18 inch circle and that just gives you the best thinness for the day it comes out to be about an eighth of an inch thick so we have a three inch biscuit cutter we're gonna go around and cut out as many rounds as possible we have about enough filling for 30 pierogi okay so we're now ready to start adding the filling we're going to use one level tablespoon measure see that the filling is nicely chilled and we'll just kind of slide that into each pierogi this looks like it takes a lot of patience to make these it does this is a little something we like to call perogatory in the kitchen because you're staring down the barrel of 24 pierogies that you now have to fold and crimp and make look perfect why don't we start folding them okay i'm going to teach you all right the way i was talk and give it a simple fold right in the middle and kind of just give it a little pinch then work over sliding to the left and then i like to come around from one end and just give it a solid pinch and this in lieu of the water is what really makes it stick together okay and we can just place them onto a lightly floured sheet of parchment you know if you don't get a perfect seal on them and they break apart yeah boiling water those are called angels oh no yeah that's an adorable name for him but it's a normal name for a mistake yeah i got the feeling i'm making some angels over here i'm an angel maker see it doesn't even sound bad no it doesn't another few minutes for this batch we'll roll out the second batch of dough and hopefully get another six cut and we're ready to boil them off [Music] okay julia we got our full 30 pierogi so now we can turn to our garnish i have four tablespoons of melted butter here over medium-low heat i'm going to add one large onion that's been minced and a half teaspoon of salt and we'll cook this until the onions are nicely caramelized and this will take about 15 to 20 minutes and now we can turn our attention to cooking the pierogi all right we have a large pot of boiling water here we're going to add one tablespoon of salt and we're going to add half of our pierogi so about 15 pierogi and the reason why we're only adding half is because we don't want to cool the water down too much now a lot of recipes i've seen they tell you the pierogi is done when they start to float is there any truth to that remember we have to cook that dough all the way through and we want to make sure we heat that filling back up let them go for the full five minutes [Music] okay julia the second batch is done oh that means it's eating time yep so we can go right into the skillet with the caramelized onions with the first batch in order to carry the onions a little bit further we'll add a couple tablespoons of this cooking water i was thinking the onions look like they need a little loosening up yeah and they need to warm up a little bit too so we're gonna hit them over medium-low heat for just a couple of minutes and we'll toss all the pierogi in that onion mixture goodness that looks terrible my mouth is watering right now so right onto the platter let's get the rest of those onions oh yeah maybe just a little more yeah that looks good well my fork just went right through that dough it's not like a rubbery lead sinker at all [Music] man i don't think i've ever had a pierogi this good you know they're filling but they're not going to weigh you down and that was kind of my my measure of great pierogies when i was in pittsburgh could i eat more than two or three without feeling like i was gonna have to take a nap to make the ultimate potato and cheddar pierogi start with rust potatoes and sharp cheddar cheese using a stand mixer beat the two together until smooth then spread the filling into a square baking dish and chill it until firm to make a supple easy to roll out dough use bread flour and sour cream along with some baking powder and egg after rolling out the dough and cutting out three inch rounds use one tablespoon of filling before giving it your own personalized crimp edge to cook the pierogi boil them in salted water for exactly five minutes then toss with caramelized onions before serving and there you have it from cook's country the best recipe for potato cheddar pierogi thanks for watching cook's country from america's test kitchen so what'd you think leave a comment and let us know which recipes you're excited to make or just say hi now you can find links to today's recipes and reviews in the video description and don't forget to subscribe to our channel see you later alligator

Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 157,949

Keywords: pierogi dough, pierogi recipe, pierogi recipe potato cheese, pittsburgh, polish food, polish food pierogi, polish pierogi, how to make pierogi, potato cheddar pierogi, cook's country, cooks country, mount lebanon pittsburgh, polish cooking, how to cook, learn to cook, cooking show

Id: 64Uv8PMsT5Y

Length: 8min 10sec (490 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 19 2019