Mexican pierogies quick version

This is simple: dough, filling and cooking. Just three steps to prepare.

Mexican pierogies dough

• Flour
• Water
• Butter on your hands

Make the pierogi dough like normal.  Do not feel you need to bring this down to a science. I simply spread some flower out, I mix whole wheat and white flower but in this case you can add corn.

I butter my hands really good and add water and work the dough.  This is great exercises for your hands.

After I work it I use a rolling pin and flatten and use a glass to make perfect round pierogi dough covers.

Mexican pierogies filling

This is the signature part of the Mexican pierogies.

• Taco meat
• Corn
• Onions
• Salsa (on top)

Fry these up in a pan. I put sour cream on them.  Below is a better detailed real version rather than Mark’s lazy mans Mexican pierogi   the bachelor

Mexican pierogi

Real recipe for Mexican pierogies

Here is the longer version which is more detailed.

Dough for the dumplings ingredients:

200 g corn flour

250 g wheaten flour

150 g lard or I use butter, not margarine which I think is unhealthy

1 table spoon of baking powder

2 eggs

2-3 spoons of water or milk

vegetable oil for frying

Filling for the dumplings ingredients:

250 g boiled minced beef

2 onions

2-3 cloves of garlic

1 green pepper

7 black olives without pits

2 table spoons of raisins

2 hard boiled eggs

3 chili peppers

half a tea spoon of Oregano and marjoram

one tablespoon of  lard (butter or olive oil).

salt

Working the dough

Now I will tell you how to make the dough.  You must mix the flour and baking soda.

Next sift the flour, there in cut the butter or lard into the flour and add salt eggs and water. then knead the dough with your hands really were due to make it like some exercise.

Next wrap it with foil or put it in a bowl and put it in the fridge for two hours.

Frying the filling for perogi

Now we are making the filling.

Chop the onion, pepper, garlic and saute it with olive oil.
Then add meat and herbs, continue to mix and saute it.

Boil water ad add raisins until the raisins become fat.

Add chili and cut the olives.

Boil the eggs and cut them up and add this all to the mix.  I use olive oil really to do the frying and not a lot.  Just very light so it is not too heavy.

Add salt

Then mixing it all together and fill it.

Add filling to the dough to the perogi

Add it in the traditional way and pinch the pierogi closed.

Again in a pan fry it lightly.  Some people boil but with Mexican dumplings frying in a pan with light olive oil is the best.

It is ready to serve.

This is a quick post is anyone has any more ideas about how to make Polish dumplings Mexican style let me know.  However, the above recipe will work.

One of the many reasons I like making Polish pierogies is it is good for me.  Let me explain, I am a computer programmer geek.  I work for very long hours, and I am either staring it at a computer screen, or typing on my blogs. By the end of the day my eyes and hands are very tired.  By the end of the week, I am exhausted .

On Sundays I love to spend the day with my family.  I love Sundays.   We often rent movies, take long walks along the Vistula river here in Krakow, Poland, and sometimes I make pierogies.

How I discovered Pierogi healing

Let me tell you the rest of the story, one day my wife and I had a disagreement over how long it would take to make pierogies.  We live in Poland, and she is from the Polish countryside, and she knows what it takes to make a good dumpling.

I am an American, and believe I can do it any thing with ease.  I said I can make pierogies  in fifteen minutes.  Needless to say she won and I lost. it took me a full three hours to make my first batch of pierogies. I was covered in dough and flour .

Although I was completely defeated, there was a silver lining.  And that was, I had a great time.  I  was listening to classical music, in a warm kitchen with my family,  while I was working the dough.  Most important I was off the computer.  And after I finished my hands felt great.  My overworked hands and eyes from being on the computer all week felt refreshed.

I think working the pierogi dough for so long actually helped my hands that are normally sore from being on the computer all day.

I can now make pierogies in under.  I love to experiment and do not make just traditional Polish or Ukrainian pierogies. I make Mexican, tropical and my own styles of pierogies.  But really if you have every made a batch of peirogies it can be great exercises and requires a lot of physical strength when you work the dough.

Pierogi diet

Further although it seems like this post is on the lighter side, there is some truth to what I write.  Working pierogi dough does help your hands if you are typing too much or sitting on your butt all day at work. This is why I called this post Pierogi healing.  I have thought of taking it a step further and creating a Polish pierogi diet for weight loss or a herbal pierogi for healing.

Since I am both Polish and Ukrainian but born in the USA and live in Poland, I take pride in pierogies and I think just like Mediterraneans have popularized their food, I could popularizes pierogies as a healthy healing diet food as well as fun to make.

One of these days I have to put all my pierogi inventions and recipes and healing herbs in a book.

The purpose of this post is to tell give you a quick review of Mrs t’s pierogies. Why do I know anything about Polish pierogi? The reason is I am an American but I am also Polish, I live in Krakow, Poland.  And as you can guess, I love to make and eat Polish pierogies, and yes I am a guy.

There is nothing wrong with this company ethically or anything, it was started as a family run food company. But there is nothing exceptional about the nutritional value or taste. It is a very processed food with processed cheese and white flour.  They use vegetable oil, I do not use oil in my Polish dumplings but rather maybe  a little olive oil. You are not going to lose weight or get healthy living on these Polish dumplings.

Mrs. T’s Pierogies are what you buy when you are in the USA and are too lazy to make your own.  I use to love them, as they were the closest I could get to Polish cooking in the States without having to go to a Polish store.  They are sold in most stores.  Therefore, I am not going to say anything bad about the.

However, when you compare Mrs. T’s Pierogies to homemade, there is no comparison.  Homemade is 100 times better than a Mrs. T Pierogi. I do not think I could eat them anymore.  However, when I was in a pinch I would pick them up a store.

Advantages of homemade compared to Mrs T’s pierogies

• When you make the dough its great exercises for your hands, especially if you use the computer a lot.
• You can make exotic types, like apple, banana and cinnamon or even more wild types of Polish pierogi.  I make dumplings with herbs like basil or oregano.  Your only limited to how high your imagination can fly.
• They are fresh not frozen. No comparison. Mrs. T’s is a little like fast food compared to Polish cuisine, not bad but not fresh and does not make you feel light when you eat them.
• It is cheaper.
• It is fun to make pierogies
• Much healthier – I use real fresh fruit and cheese. You can even use whole wheat flour or some other variation.  You can make it low fat or use olive oil.

The advantages of Mrs. T’s Pierogies

• Fast and convenient pierogies if you are a working person
• It is good that the company brings a little Polish culture to mainstream American, even if it is Polish cooking.

Mrs. T’s Pierogies rating

Mrs. T's Pierogies do not look like this

I wold give them three stars.  However, this depends if you like in the USA or Poland.  After living in Poland I think they are more like two stars.  But for Americans I will maintain a four star out of five rating.  They have many different types, mostly cheese and potato based pierogies. My favorate pierogies are fruit and meat based pierogies as well as exotic non tradictional Polish cooking pierogies. And this is something Mrs. T’s Pierogies do not have.

To make a pierogi – experiment but here is a start.

5 cups flour
1/4 lb. butter (not margarine please, margarine is not good for you anyway)
1 cup sour cream
3/4 cup water
6 egg yolks (I think yolks are healthy, they have lecithin and selenium etc)
3 eggs
Salt – I prefer course salt. Poland had great salt, it taste totally different than commercial US salt. Its more like sea salt.

Pierogi Dough

Make a mountain out of the flour, then make a hole in the center, like a volcano.  Pierogi mountain if you will.
Place egg yolks and eggs in the center, cutting in the flour with a knife and adding water and salt. Work the pierogi dough until firm. Cut the pierogi dough into thirds.

Making a pierogi

Roll it out until its a thin sheet. From here you make circles with a cutter or simply a cup. Place small amount of pierogi filling in the middle on each circle of pierogi dough. Filling could be any thing form cheese to cabbage to caviar/roe to meat to pinapple, use you pierogi imagination. Roll/fold and seal by putting a little water on the edge and press down. This is your first pierogi.

Cooking the Pierogi

Boil a pot of water. Add salt. Put pierogi into boiling water.
Cook lightly for 5 minutes on low. Remove and strain.

You can also brown or fry it in butter in a pan, I use a black iron skillet with small chopped onions.

I serve with melted butter, but you can put anything you want on it. This is how you make a simple  Pierogi.

Pierogis are found in Polish, Russian and Ukrainian cooking.  I ussually think of a pierogi as a Polish recipe.