Annual Perogie Making Day!

Christmas in my family has always been a fun time surrounded by friends and family, food and drink, and very merry times. One of my all time favorite foods we have at Christmas are perogies -- not those store bought, frozen things, but real homemade with extra love perogies. For the last I don't know how many years, my Nana and I have been getting together on Remembrance Day and making perogies for Christmas (and for the rest of the year because it's kind of a big production to do..) and this year was no different except that I took pictures and am going to share with you how we do it!

My personal preference is potato and cheddar perogies -- I make sure to make them nice and cheesy. The family loves em, we also make potato and cottage cheese perogies (those are my Papa's favorite) but you can make all kinds of different flavours like spinach and feta with potato, sweet potato with sage and butter, or even pizza by mixing a bit of tomato paste in with your potatoes, adding some cheese and some pepperoni. 

Don’t be scared off by the instructions I’m about to provide, it is a fair amount of work and time, but your efforts will be rewarded :)
The best thing to do is boil your potatoes ahead of time (earlier in the day or the night before) because you need some water from the potatoes to make the dough. The other thing to note is that the dough has to rest for about 2-2½ hours so make sure to give yourself enough time and something to do while you’re waiting around. One batch of dough makes about 65 perogies; we usually do 6 batches of dough or more on our annual perogie pinchathon. 

Ok, now for the dough recipe:

 ·         1/2 tsp salt

·         2 1/2 C flour

·         3/4 C potato water (water used for boiling your potatoes)

·         2 tbsp canola oil

·         1 well beaten egg

Mix wet ingredients together, add dry together. Combine, knead dough until smooth. Cover with a tea towel and let stand 2 hours. 

Roll out dough to about pie crust thickness and cut into circles 

Fill em n pinch em

Drop into boiling water, cook 8-10 mins or until they float to the surface

As a side note, I thought it would be good to officially initiate Maggie into the family by giving her her first perogies which she obviously loved ;)