A lovely day making big-batch Pierogi with Jolene Kolk of PANTRY Studios!
I love ANY day spent lounging in the Kitchen, working with my hands, creating dishes and providing deliciousness for my family. What a pleasure to spend one such day with the lovely Jolene Kolk, of PANTRY Studios! With our shared passions for food & photos, the day flew by and didn’t feel like ‘work’ at all. Even as we created OVER 200 PIEROGI!
Pierogi Day
Back when I had 4 kids all at home, a few Ladies’ and I would spend a day making 10+ batches of 3-4 different recipes to share amongst our freezers. I loved having homemade food on hand on those days when I just didn’t feel like cooking anything. Since two have flown from the nest and one more spends all his evenings cooking in Restaurants, I haven’t been on the freezer binging as much. But I’d say with just 3 of the 6 of us home regularly, it’s almost needed more than ever – less people to cook for, leaves me less motivated to ALWAYS be in the Kitchen.
My eldest daughter brought back a Pierogy recipe from her European travels ages ago that I somehow still had on hand. I also went through a number of recipes online and narrowed it down to 3 definite ingredients, and 2 flexible ones. True Pierogi don’t use Eggs (or so I’ve read), and some recipes used only Egg Whites, but I was nervous about freezing without a little extra binding in the mix to avoid cracking the dough, so I incorporated 3. The other flexible ingredient was the fat. Some recipes called for Olive Oil, some for (melted) Butter. We tried 3 varieties of Butter/more Butter/Oil, and found the MORE BUTTER made the most workable and softest dough.
Needless to say, they ALL turned out DELICIOUS and I’m sure won’t last too long in the freezers haha. We enjoyed the two different fillings at dinner with our Hubbies & kids at the end of the night – with all the fixings, of course! – and couldn’t have been happier with the results.
Now the only real question is … What to batch-cook next?!!!
Pantry Studios BLOG
You can see the rest of Jolene’s Blog HERE! While you’re over there, check out her STUNNING Photography & other Recipes / posts!!
RECIPE
We went through a number of iterations of this dough!
With some research, we landed on 3 varieties to test – using some butter, more butter, or oil. As we should have guessed – life is always better with MORE BUTTER!
For the filling, we worked with 1kg – 1.5kg potatoes (cut/boiled/riced) with approximately 500g – 800g of various fillings. We made 1 or 2 pierogy to test each filling for the right amount of seasonings before wrapping the … 230+?! – we ended up making with a total of 3 batches of dough!
Perogi Dough
makes approx 6 dozen
1 kg flour
large pinch salt
3 eggs
1 cup warm water
1/2 – 1 cup melted butter
Sift flour into a bowl of a counter top mixer. Add 3 eggs in the center of the flour. Mix slowly with paddle attachment. As its mixing, slowly pour in water and butter. Mix / knead 5 mins in mixer. Add flour/more butter as needed as it is kneading. The mixture will be very thick and almost gluey, but texture will soften with resting. Do not overmix.
Rest 30-60 mins. Roll out with a dusting of flour. We used a pasta roller and thinned it to the #5 setting on the roller, then used a round cookie cutter to get the shape, filled with potato filling, and sealed by hand.
Finished perogies take 3-4 minutes to cook in boiling water. Frozen ones will take closer to 5-6 minutes.
IGTV Live with Jolene Kolk
Did you catch my IGTV Live with Jolene? We chatted about Food as Art, Photography, and introduced our Still Life Series of Art Prints that are up in my Shop (link below).
I’m officially OBSESSED with these gorgeous prints we produced and Jolene shot for my ‘Elevate’ wares! I hung all 3 in my Dining Room right away. The richness of the shadow and light is palpable. The intricate details of the mushroom gills, or the dripping links of sausage, pull you in to the space. The stillness. The still life.
Your Turn!
I can’t wait to see YOUR Pierogi! Tag @p_a_n_t_r_y and @ak_thehomekitchen in your photos so we can see them!
What’s your favorite filling for Pierogi?
Let me know in the comments – I can’t wait to try new varieties next time I mix up a batch.
