4. HOW TO COOK PIEROGIS
Boil like pasta! Just make sure you don’t crowd the pot. Pierogis needs space to bounce around! I cook 8 in a medium pot, and up to 12 in a wider pot. Tips below for batching cooking larger quantities.
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Sauté onion first – Sauté chopped onion in butter until golden on the edges. Then transfer into a bowl or container and use as much or as little as you want for whatever size serving of pierogis you are making. 1 large onion is enough for 30 pierogis because they are only sparingly scattered with onion, like pictured. Cook onion will keep for 5 days in the fridge, or freezer for 3 months.
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Boil 5 minutes – Bring ~3 litres/quarts of water to the boil with 1 tablespoon of salt. Lower 10 pierogis into the water and cook for 5 minutes, or until they are floating on the surface (they sink at first).
⚠️ As noted above the step photos, don’t crowd the pot else the pierogis will stick together and cook unevenly.
⚡️ It’s important to use salted water so you get some seasoning into the pierogis wrapper as it cooks. Makes it tastier!
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Reserve water – Dip a jug into the water and scoop out 1 cup water. We’re going to use a bit of this water to make the sauce. The cooking water is better than tap water because it’s got starch from the pierogi dough in it which makes the sauce thicken. If you just mixed water + butter together, it stays water.
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Scoop out or drain – Then use a slotted spoon to transfer pierogi into a bowl. Or, you can drain in a colander if you are not using the water to cook more.
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Butter sauce – Using a largish pan, melt 25g butter (1 1/2 tablespoons) over medium heat. Add 1/3 of the onion butter (from step 1) plus the cooked pierogis with 2 tablespoons of the reserved cooking water.
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Toss for 1 minute, still on the stove, until the pierogis are coated in the butter sauce. You’ll see it goes from watery (when you first add the water) to thickened so it sticks to the surface of the pierogi.
Larger batch – Just scale up the butter, onion and water. At this stage, it’s easy to eye-ball it. And I wouldn’t discourage the use of even more butter!
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Serve – Slide onto a serving plate, scraping out every drop of butter. Sprinkle with parsley, add a dollop of sour cream. Eat and be happy!
Big-batch cooking of Pierogi
As strange as it sounds to have a whole section on how to cook and serve larger batches of pierogi, there’s actually practical factors that come into play that need to be considered! The reason is because they are quite large – bigger than Gyoza and Chinese dumplings, you can’t boil more than 10 to 12 max per batch, and they need to be tossed in the sauce on the stove.
So the recipe I’m sharing today makes 30 pierogis but provides directions to cook one batch of 8 to 10 (which is a nice amount for 2 people). Leftovers are perfect for freezing – you can cook from frozen!
But if you would like to cook all 30 pierogis, here’s some practical tips for how to do it!
BOILING LARGE BATCHES
Pierogis need to be boiled in a single layer else they can get stuck together and the wrapping won’t cook evenly. So you’ll max out at around 12 pierogis in a large home-pot.
If you want to make and serve more, then boil in batches of 12 and spread cooked pierogis on a tray. Once you’ve boiled as much as you want, then drop all of them back into the pot for 30 seconds to reheat before tossing with the butter. Reserve a mugful of the cooking water then drain in a colander.
LARGE BATCH BUTTER SAUCE TOSSING
For the butter sauce tossing part, you can put in as many pierogis as you can comfortably fit into a large skillet. You could even use a large pot. Just make sure you can toss the pierogis, because that’s how you get a nice coating of butter on them.
SIMPLE METHOD FOR GIGANTIC BATCHES
If you want to serve all 30 pierogis at the same time, an easy way to sauce them up is to make the sauce separately then douse over the pierogis.
To do this, cook the pierogis per above (ie boil then reheat). Drain well in a colander and transfer into a serving bowl. Melt 70g / 4 1/2 tbsp unsalted butter with 1/3 cup of the cooking water in a small pan on medium heat. Simmer for a couple of minutes until the butter thickens (the starch in the pierogi cooking water makes this happen).
