Dec 16, 2022 5 min read

Pierogies – those scrumptious, crescent-shaped dumplings stuffed with potato and cheese – once were considered “poor man’s food.”

But pierogies (or pierogi, perogy, pyrohy or pirohi), are one of Poland’s greatest dishes and were an indispensable staple of holiday celebrations when I was growing up.

A simple mixture of flour, eggs, water and salt, pierogies are Old World comfort food that my sister, Karol Snead, and I made alongside our mother, the late Nancy Koren, in the kitchen of our childhood home in Canonsburg at Lent, Easter and Christmas, and whenever we craved them.

My culinary philosophy is “Food is love,” and for me, making pierogies – then and today – is one of my favorite expressions of love. 

My mother was Lithuanian, but she maintained the line between traditional Lithuanian and Polish cuisine was fuzzy. And while she didn’t very much like cooking every day (we ate our fair share of fried bologna sandwiches), she delighted in preparing huge holiday dinners, and pierogies were one of our favorite parts of those meals.

Though there are a variety of options for fillings – sauerkraut and mushroom, sautéed cabbage, meat and cottage cheese – potatoes and cheese was our favorite, and the only version we made.

Pierogie-making is a several-hours-long event. There are no shortcuts, and we craft pierogies today exactly the same way we did in the 1970s.

My mother was in charge of making the dough. She followed a recipe, but inevitably added fistsful of flour until the dough reached a perfect consistency (the secret to a good pierogies, it turns out, is a good batch of dough – too thick and the pierogies are too chewy, too thin and the dough tears).

She rolled out the dough and cut out the circles using a drinking glass. 

My sister and I were participants in the next part of the pierogie assembly line. While one of us dropped the mashed potatoes and cheese mixture onto the circles of dough, the other folded the pierogies in half and sealed them meticulously using the tine of a fork. 

The process slowed occasionally, when the dough stretched too thin and potato and cheese poked through, and my mother, Karol and I rescued them by carefully adding little patches of dough.

Then, my mom dropped the pierogies into a pot of boiling water and carefully removed them with a slotted spoon when they floated to the top. 

Karol and I transferred them into a bowl and smothered them with sautéed onions and melted butter.

Usually, we made six to eight dozen pierogies. It took a lot longer to make them than it did to eat them. 

My oldest daughter, Katherine Mansfield, recently recalled a sleepover she had when she was about 11 years old, and she and her friends pitched in to help me make pierogies (I don’t remember what the occasion was). 

The pierogie-making culminated with us building what we dubbed “the world’s largest pierogie,” an enormous circle of dough that we filled with all of the leftover potato and cheese filling, boiled, slathered with butter and onions, and then divided up and ate. 

I have the photo I took of the kids and the giant pierogie buried somewhere in a photo box, and plan to dig it out sometime soon.

For the record though, that pierogie, while large, did not approach the size of the actual world’s largest pierogie, which I believe created in 2017 by the Hospitality Management Center of Excellence at Cuyahoga Community College in conjunction with a food festival and weighing in at 216 pounds. It included with 117 pounds of potatoes, 15 pounds of cheddar cheese and 75 pounds of dough.

The recipe Karol and make today differs a bit from my mother’s, since we add sour cream. 

About three or four years ago, I started making a gluten-free dough for my son Matthew’s fiancee, Julie Gerber, who has Celiac’s disease and should not be denied the chance to dine on the delicious dumplings. 

The gluten-free pierogies, I’m pleased to report, do not disappoint.

Some of the best memories of my childhood are the many times I spent in the kitchen with my mom and Karol, white flour blanketing the countertop, the fragrant smell of the butter and onions, sneaking the filling while we stuffed the pierogies.

As an adult, the most fun I’ve ever had making pierogies was in September 2021, when Karol and I made more than 25 dozen pierogies for a pierogie bar for my daughter, Katherine, and her husband, Josh Merola, when they held their wedding at our North Strabane Township home (yes, we also had the Pittsburgh cookie table). 

“That was so special and so cool, having hundreds and hundreds of pierogies made by hand by my mom and aunt and served to all of the guests at our wedding. It was special, sharing an important part of our side of the family with my husband’s side of the family,” said Katherine. “They still talk about the pierogies.”

My daughter Jackie Marshall, who, like my mother, doesn’t like to cook, didn’t mind helping to make pierogies when she was little.

“It was always fun helping to roll out the dough, fill them up, and close them with the fork prongs. Nice Hunky family bonding time,” she said, a reference to our Hungarian roots.

I don’t know if my children will carry on the tradition of making homemade pierogies, but I hope they do. Because it’s not nearly so much about eating the savory, soft and warm dumplings as it is about the love that goes into making them. Pierogies are love.