Polish blueberry pierogi: thin dough, wild bilberries, sweet sour cream
The July dinner you wait for since spring: a thin hot-water dough, a handful of wild bilberries with a little sugar inside, sour cream whisked with sugar on top. In the pot the berries release their juice and the dough turns purple. Forty from half a kilo of berries; half will vanish straight from the pot anyway.
Your own work in that: 1 h 15 min.
- Dough 15 min
- Dough resting 20 min
- Shaping 35 min
- Cooking 25 min
Step by step
0 / 6 doneKnead a hot-water dough
Pour the hot water with the oil into the flour and salt, mix with a spoon, then knead by hand 6–8 minutes, until smooth, soft and elastic. Wrap in film and set aside: after resting it relaxes and rolls thin without springing back.
Ingredients: 400 g plain flour · 200 ml water · 1 tbsp oil · ½ tsp salt
TipHot water gives a soft, elastic dough that doesn't split over the berries and doesn't dry out while you shape forty of them.
Smooth, soft, resting under filmPrepare the berries
The dough rests 20 minutes — meanwhile pick over the berries, rinse in a sieve and dry thoroughly on a cloth. Wet berries soak the dough edge and the pierogi come apart. Mix the sugar with the potato starch: the starch binds the juice inside.
Ingredients: 500 g wild bilberries · 3 tbsp sugar · 1 tbsp potato starch
Dry berries, sugar with potato starchRoll and fill
Divide the dough in 3, roll one piece to 2 mm, cut 7–8 cm circles with a glass. Put a heaped teaspoon of berries (about 12 g) and a pinch of the sugar-starch on each. No more: overfilled pierogi burst.
A teaspoon of berries, a pinch of sugar and starchSeal firmly
Fold each circle in half and pinch the edge very thoroughly, pressing with your fingers from the middle to the corners; the berries swell in cooking and push on the seam. The edge must be dry and sugar-free. Lay on a floured cloth.
TipIf the edge won't stick, moisten it with a finger dipped in water. A crimped frill along the edge is extra insurance and the traditional look.
Middle to corners, a dry edgeCook in batches
Bring a wide pot of salted water with a teaspoon of sugar to the boil, lower to a gentle simmer. Drop in 12 pierogi at a time, stir once. When they float, cook another 3 minutes. Lift out with a slotted spoon onto a plate and drizzle with a little oil so they don't stick. All the batches take about 25 minutes in total.
A gentle simmer, three minutes after floatingServe with sour cream
Stir the sour cream with the sugar and vanilla sugar. Serve the pierogi hot, sour cream poured over. Freeze the rest raw on a tray; cook from frozen a minute longer.
Ingredients: 300 g sour cream, 18 % · 2 tbsp sugar · 1 tsp vanilla sugar
Sweet sour cream, purple juice
Before you start
Pan-fried
Cold blueberry pierogi fried in butter 2 minutes a side: crisp edges, caramelised juice. Many prefer them this way to boiled.
With strawberries or cherries
Quartered strawberries or stoned sour cherries instead of bilberries, the same teaspoon of potato starch. Cherries with sugar are the July classic.
They burst in the pot
Too much filling, a wet edge, or too hard a boil. Fewer berries, an edge wiped dry, water barely bubbling.
