Polish stuffed potato dumplings (pyzy): raw and boiled potato, recovered starch, marjoram filling
These pyzy are made from raw and boiled potatoes in a ratio of three to one. The raw ones are grated finely and squeezed hard, and the starch that settles out of the squeezed juice goes back into the dough: that starch, not flour, is what glues a pyza together and holds it whole in the pot. They cook in barely trembling water for about twenty-five minutes after they float and are served with bacon rendered with onion.
Your own work in that: 1 h 15 min.
- Potatoes boiling 25 min
- Dough 25 min
- Shaping 20 min
- Cooking 30 min
Step by step
0 / 9 done
Boil the smaller batch of potatoes
Boil 500 g of the potatoes in their skins in salted water 25 minutes, until tender. Peel while still warm, press through a ricer and spread on a plate to cool. They must be cold before they go into the dough.
Ingredients: 1500 g raw potatoes · 500 g potatoes to boil · 2 tbsp potato starch · 2 tsp salt
Half a kilo in their skins, riced, cooled
Grate the raw potatoes
Peel the remaining 1.5 kg and grate on the finest side of a box grater, or blitz to a pulp in a food processor. Work fast and don't stop: grated potato darkens within a quarter of an hour.
Finest grater, quickly
Squeeze the grated potato
Tip the pulp into a cotton cloth, gather it into a bundle and twist hard over a bowl until it stops dripping; 1.5 kg usually gives up 400–500 ml of juice. Set the squeezed pulp aside and keep the bowl of juice: the starch comes out of it.
TipRaw potato is nearly 80 % water, and without a hard squeeze the dough cannot be shaped at all; the mass simply shreds in the water. Keep twisting until the cloth releases only a drop every few seconds.
Twist until it stops dripping
Recover the starch from the juice
Leave the bowl of squeezed juice to stand 15 minutes. A dense white layer of starch settles on the bottom. Carefully pour off the water above it, scrape up the starch with a spoon and add it to the squeezed potato.
TipThe starch, the natural glue of a pyza, leaves along with the juice. Recovered from the bottom of the bowl it goes back into the dough, replaces flour, and lightens the mixture too, because it is snow-white.
Fifteen minutes to settle, pour off, scrape up
Knead the dough
Combine the squeezed raw potato, the cold riced boiled potato, the recovered starch, the potato starch and the salt. Knead by hand 2–3 minutes, until the mass is even, smooth and slightly tacky but firm enough to roll into a ball. Too loose? A spoon of potato starch. Too stiff? A spoon of the squeezed juice.
TipThree parts raw to one part boiled is no accident. The starch in cooked potato is already gelatinised and acts as the binder that holds the raw mass together. From raw potato alone a pyza is grey, rubbery and falls apart in the water; from boiled alone you get a dough closer to kopytka or Silesian dumplings.
Three parts raw, one part boiled
Make the filling
Dice the onion finely and soften in the butter 8 minutes, until golden; cool. Mix with the meat, the marjoram crushed between your palms, salt and pepper, kneading by hand for a minute. Fry a small test patty and taste it: the filling inside a pyza must be boldly seasoned, because the potato dough is bland.
Ingredients: 400 g minced pork · 1 pcs onion · 20 g butter · 1 tsp dried marjoram · 1 tsp salt · ½ tsp black pepper
Golden onion, marjoram, a test patty
Shape the dumplings
Set a bowl of water beside you. Wet your hands, take a twelfth of the dough (about 120 g, the size of a small fist), flatten it on your palm to 1 cm thick and put a walnut-sized ball of filling in the centre. Draw the edges up, seal them thoroughly and roll between wet palms into a smooth ball with no cracks. Set on a board dusted with potato starch. This batch makes 12.
Wet hands, a smooth ball, filling inside
Cook in barely trembling water
Bring a wide pot of salted water to the boil, then lower the heat until the surface only trembles. Lower the dumplings in with a slotted spoon and nudge them off the bottom once; they must fit loosely in a single layer (a pot about 28 cm across takes all 12, in a smaller one cook them in two batches). When they float, cook a further 20–25 minutes. Cut the first one open: the dough should be even and translucent, with no raw white centre.
TipA pyza is large and dense, so the raw starch in the middle needs more than twenty minutes to gelatinise; lifted out after five it is raw and grey inside. At the same time a hard boil tears it apart from the outside, so the only way is long and very gentle.
Barely trembling water, twenty-five minutes
Render the bacon and serve
Dice the bacon and render it in a cold pan over medium heat 6 minutes, until crisp. Add the onion, sliced into half-moons, and fry a further 5 minutes until golden. Lift the dumplings out with a slotted spoon, drain and pour the hot bacon and its fat over them. Serve at once.
Ingredients: 150 g smoked bacon · 1 pcs onion
Crisp bacon, golden onion, straight from the pan
Before you start
Freezing
Freeze the raw shaped dumplings on a tray, not touching, then bag them. Cook from frozen, lowering them into barely boiling water, 5 minutes longer. Thawed before cooking they fall apart.
With mushrooms
Instead of meat, 30 g dried mushrooms, soaked and chopped, with 400 g chopped button mushrooms and an onion, all fried in butter until the water has cooked off. A meat-free version, for example for Christmas Eve.
They fell apart in the pot
Three causes: the dough was too wet because it was not squeezed hard enough; the water was boiling too hard; or the balls had cracks that let water in. Always cook one test dumpling before you drop in the whole batch.
Nutrition
per 100 gStep photos are computer-generated from the recipe.
