I love dumplings in any size and shape; pierogis, pot stickers, empanadas, They’re all good. There’s just something comforting about a great filling covered in thin dough. This month, I’ve been experimenting with pierogis and empanadas, since I’ve already covered pot stickers. These pierogis are vegetarian, and filled with potatoes (another favorite) and cheese. The most time consuming part was rolling out the millions of pierogi wrappers, because of course I made them from scratch. These pierogis are typically served with sour cream, but we forgot to get some so we ate them alone. They definitely needed some kind of dipping sauce though, so I recommend going ahead and grabbing the sour cream!

Potato and Cheese Pierogis

For the filling:

• 2 cups chopped, unpeeled potatoes
• 1 cup cottage cheese
• 3/4 cup grated cheddar cheese (plus more for eating while you cook)
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 1 tsp Dijon mustard
• 1 tsp dried dill
• black pepper

For the dough:

• 1 1/2 c all purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/8 tsp nutmeg
• 4 tbsp butter
• 2 eggs, beaten

Boil your potatoes until easily pierced with a fork. Drain and mash, then mix in the cheeses, lemon juice, mustard, dill, and pepper. Combine and set aside while you work on your dough.

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Combine flour, salt, and nutmeg into a food processor and combine. Add in the butter and combine, then add the eggs. Let it form a big ball, and then take it out and kneed it for a minute to make sure that everything is combined. Cut the dough into fourths, roll each fourth and then cut again until you have 16 small balls of dough.

Roll them out into circle-ish pieces and put filling in the middle. Fold over, and seal with a fork that’s been dipped in water. Repeat until all the pierogis are full or you run out of something.

Boil pierogis in small batches for about 5 minutes. Serve with butter, sour cream, and paprika. If you don’t want to cook all of them, freeze the uncooked ones. When you’re ready to cook, just boil for an extra few minutes.