As another entry in the category of “food shaped like pockets”:  pierogis.  Pierogis come from eastern Europe and are little bundles of dough with potatoes and other toppings inside.  They’re basically ravioli stuffed with mashed potatoes – what’s not to love?

A lot of the pierogis you can find in grocery stores and restaurants are filled simply with potato and onion, but we decided to make some at home and put out own spin on them.  Here’s what we used:

• Flour
• 1 egg
• Salt
• Vegetable oil
• 3 potatoes
• 2 jalapeños
• Butter
• Cheddar cheese
• Sour cream

To make the dough, we mixed together 3 cups of flour, 1 cup of water, our beaten egg, a teaspoon of salt, and 2 teaspoons of vegetable oil.  Once all these ingredients had come together to form a dough, we used our hands to knead the dough on a floured surface until a smooth, soft ball had formed.  Then we placed the dough in a bowl, covered it tightly in plastic wrap, and set it aside for about an hour.

While we waited, we made the potato filling.

We took our potatoes and diced them up, then placed them in a pot and covered them with just enough water to submerge them.  We set the pot to boil on the stove for 25 minutes, then drained the potatoes and put them back in the pot.  We finely chopped our jalapeños, added them in with 6 tablespoons of butter and mashed everything together.

Once the dough was ready, we rolled it out into a very thin sheet and used a glass to cut it into circles.

We filled each dough circle with a heaping spoonful of the potato mixture and a small handful of cheddar cheese.

We spread a tiny amount of water along the outer edge of each dough circle and then folded them in half so that the filling was completely enclosed.  We pinched them closed and used a small fork to crimp the edges to make sure they stayed shut.

To cook the pierogis, we brushed a skillet with vegetable oil and then cooked the pierogis on each side until they were lightly browned (you can also boil the pierogis like pasta).  Once they had cooled off slightly, we served them with some sour cream as a topping or to dip in.

These were a nice, untraditional twist on your usual pierogis.  The jalapeño added some spiciness to the potatoes, and the cheddar cheese made everything nice and creamy.  Filling the pierogis turned out to be a little bit of a challenge – we kept having to repair them after they broke from being overloaded with potatoes – but otherwise this recipe wasn’t too difficult to make.  So if you’re looking for something a little different to cook, from a part of the world whose cuisine doesn’t get a lot of attention, definitely try your hand at these pierogis.