Every Christmas Eve since I was a little girl I can remember having pierogi as part of Wigilia, our Christmas Eve dinner.
When my Nanny was still with us, I can remember her making these from scratch each year.
And until I took my first try at them last holiday season, I never realized that these would be one of the most difficult tasks I have ever tried to tackle in the kitchen!
You have to get everything just right… and my Nanny knew just how to do it. But me, I’m still learning 😀
So today the Fanatic ladies spent the afternoon in the kitchen carrying on the tradition, making pierogi, from scratch.
Well not this lil’ fanatic lady, although she sure did try 😉
Fanatic Mom and her two girls. I know Nanny would be proud.
Potato & Cheese Pierogi
First step is to make the dough. This dough is more temperamental than me on a Monday. Just sayin’
Flour, milk, eggs and salt.
This year I actually followed the directions and sifted the flour. I’m attributing that to the increased quality of the final dough product.
Along with this fabulous kitchen tool. The pasta roller. Love this thing and it made rolling the dough thin enough possible without me breaking my back, a la last year.
For the most part 😀
Next step, make the filling. This would be a mixture of potatoes, sharp cheddar and onions sauted in butter.
This is the stuff dreams are made of. I think we can all agree on that.
After your dough is rolled thin, cut out circles using the top of a drinking glass. No need to get too fancy here.
Drop a spoonful of the potato mixture on top.
Then seal, using a fork if you like.
Let’s just say that Mini-Fanatic got reallyyyyyyyy good at this step 😉
Last step is to boil in hot water. For about 5 minutes. This gets them ready to be stashed away in the freezer until Christmas Eve arrives.
Which is where they are now, whispering to me “come eat me, come eat me”…
Because that’s just so totally normal.
I can’t wait until Friday is here, toasted up in some warm butter and drenched in green onions, these are going to be outta this world delicious!
Just you wait and see 😉
There was also some Sunday night family dinner cooking action going on during the day… which you’ll see soon enough. But until then, here’s a little hint!
Oh yeaaaaa.
Plans for the upcoming week include one day of work. One day. Monday has never looked so sweet 😉
Then lots of baking, cooking, hanging out with family and relaxing. Love the holidays!
Have you ever eaten pierogi?
CookinFanatic 
I’ve never eaten pierogi before. It looks really good. What a great tradition to continue.
oh my gosh- pierogi’s are SO good! Before I went to Penn State, I had never even heard of them. Then all of my friends from the Pittsburgh area starting bringing homemade ones to school after holidays…and I was in heaven. I heart potatoes and ravioli’s…so the two combined in one is just awesome to me. Yours look so good! I can’t wait to see them all cooked up
Oh my gosh… I LOVE them! We are from Pittsburgh, of course we have!!
My fiance and I started this tradition last year too!! So fun 🙂 Drink a little (a lot of?) wine, listen to Christmas stations on Pandora on the TV…we use a slightly different dough recipe though (2 cups flour, 1/3 cup water, 1/2 tsp salt, 1 egg). For the second year in a row, we realized the dough is much softer and easier to work with after the first few batches (we usually do 4 or 5 batches of dough in one day – hello sore arms!!). We finally figured out it’s because of how steamy the room gets from the boiling pot of water on the stove!! So next year, we’re going to plug in our humidifier in the kitchen for a few hours before we start, in hopes that the moist air will make the dough easy to work with from the beginning. I always just assumed we made better pierogi toward the end of the day due to the wine consumption 😉 This year we also filled some with a kielbasa/sauerkrat mixture…I was skeptical, but they are delicious as well! Anything fried in butter is going to be delicious though, I suppose. We spent 2 days making them this year, one day over Thanksgiving and one day last weekend – we made close to 200 of them. Our freezer is overflowing…but we prefer to give them out to friends/family instead of the boring, standard cookie. They’re more special 🙂
Love your blog – I’ve been reading for quite a while, I’m a fellow Richmonder – I contacted you earlier in the year about your tonsillectomy! I had mine out in May, and I am SO SO glad I went through with it 🙂 Happy holidays to the fanatic fam!
I have had pirogies but never made them before.
I grew up in NJ and everyone knew what pirogies were but now I’m living in MA, I find that almost no one has ever heard of them! Odd!
That does sound super hard. I love periogi though!
Droooool! I commend you for all your hard work….that takes some patience! But clearly worth it. Or so I can imagine, as I’ve only ever had frozen pre-made processed pierogi and LOVED them, so I can only imagine how amazing yours are!