Stuffed with Love: Handmade pierogies a generational tradition
Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
To prevent pierogie dough from sticking to the kitchen island, Karen Mansfield gently powders the surface with flour. She and her sister Karol Snead spent a recent weekday making pierogies from scratch, a tradition passed down by their mother, Nancy Koren.
Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
Karen Mansfield uses a cup to cut out a perfect circle, while her twin sister, Karol Snead, waits to fill the dough with cheesy mashed potatoes. The Canonsburg natives have made homemade pierogies together since childhood, when their mother Nancy Koren taught them the long, love-filled process.
Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
Karen Mansfield drops dough onto a kitchen island while her sister, Karol Snead, finishes pinching a stuffed pierogie on a recent weekday. The sisters spent their childhood holidays handmaking pierogies with their mother, Nancy Koren.
Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
Pierogies cook in boiling water; when they’re ready, the mashed potatoes and cheese-stuffed dough floats to the surface. Karol Snead fished for finished pierogies and added them to a strainer before her sister, Karen Mansfield, smothered them in butter and onions.
Courtesy Karen Mansfield
Sisters Karen Mansfield (pictured) and Karol Snead prepared more than 25 dozen pierogies for the September 2021 wedding of her daughter, Katherine Mansfield, and her husband, Josh Merola.
Karen Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
Karol Snead, pictured here in 2021, making more than 25 dozen pierogies with her sister, Karen Mansfield, for the wedding of her niece, Katherine Mansfield, and Katherine’s husband, Josh Merola.
Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
Karol Snead lovingly seals a pierogi using the tines of a fork the way her mother, the late Nancy Koren, of Canonsburg, taught her.
Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
Pierogies, stuffed and sealed with love, wait to be placed into boiling water for cooking.
Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
Growing up, Karen Mansfield and Karol Snead used drinking glasses to cut perfect pierogi dough circles, a trick of the trade the twins still use today when crafting the traditional Polish dumpling.
Pierogies – those delicious, crescent-shaped dumplings stuffed with potato and cheese – once were considered a poor man’s food.
But pierogies (or pirogi, perogy, or pyrohy), 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 all 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 thin. 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 cheddar 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 fistfuls 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 rips).
She rolled out the dough and cut out the circles using a drinking glass or coffee mug.
My sister and I were participants in the next part of the pierogie assembly line. While one of us dropped a dollop of the mashed potatoes and cheese mixture onto the circles of dough, the other folded the pierogies in half and sealed them meticulously using the tines 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 10 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 called “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 was created in 2017 by the Hospitality Management Center of Excellence at Cuyahoga Community College for a food festival and weighed 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 joy of dining 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, dough-hardened utensils, 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 a 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 buttery dumplings as it is about the love that goes into making them. Pierogies are love.
Grammatical note: Pierogi is actually the plural of pierog, but in my family, we call them pierogies.
Pierogie recipe
Makes about 5 dozen
Dough:
4 cups flour
½ cup warm milk
½ cup water
2 whole eggs and 2 yolks
4 tablespoons sour cream
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons butter (optional, for richer dough – I don’t use)
Filling
4 cups homemade mashed potatoes or instant mashed potatoes, prepared according to direction on package
4-6 ounces cheddar cheese (add cheese to taste)
Directions:
Combine dough ingredients and knead into a soft, pliable dough. Let rest for 10 minutes, covered with a towel.
Sprinkle some reserved flour over the work surface, and lightly coat hands and rolling pin.
Divide dough into halves and roll thin.
Sprinkle reserved flour as needed to keep dough from sticking, but use sparingly to prevent dough from toughening.
Cut circles (using a drinking glass, mug, or biscuit cutter).
Place a small spoonful of filling, close to the center of the dough circle.
Fold over and pinch edges together firmly. Be careful to keep filling from the seam, and make sure the pierogies are well sealed to prevent the filling from leaking out.
Bring a pot of lightly salted water to a boil.
Gently drop pierogies into boiling water. If pierogies stick to bottom, nudge with a slotted spoon.
Boil until pierogies float, or about 5 minutes. Lift pierogies out of water with a slotted spoon and place in a colander to drain.
Place in a bowl and top with melted butter and sautéed onions. Optionally, sauté pierogies until browned. Can be served with a dollop of sour cream.