When I blogged about pierogi lasagna back in May, I said I tasted my first pierogi when I was 12. Scratch that. Totally not true. I was more like seven.

I know, this is really important. Everything you’ve ever known to be true hinges on the exact age I was when I had that fateful pierogi. You’ve been making decisions based on that fact alone! How could I have gotten it wrong!?

Sorry, guys.

So those pierogi I ate as a 12-year-old, those were the frozen kind from the local kosher store. But my actual first pierogi tasting took place on a family vacation to Miami, at Sara’s Pizza.

Seriously, that place is ingrained in my childhood memories…we were there a lot. It wasn’t vacation without a dozen meals at Sara’s!

So we were sitting in a booth one day, giving the waitress our orders. Did your parents order for you as a kid? In our family, if you were old enough to decide what you wanted for dinner, you were old enough to order it.

I asked for the pierogi, please. (One of my parents had already explained to me that pierogi were pasta-like things filled with cheesy mashed potatoes.)

Sure, the waitress said. Did I want that boiled or deep-fried?

Um. I was seven. I didn’t know what boiled was, and I didn’t know what deep-fried was. I looked to my mother for help.

Inside, I’m sure she was cringing at the thought of her seven-year-old eating what would have probably been my first plate of deep-fried food.

“Try the boiled kind,” she said without batting an eye. “It’s healthier.”

I was a good little girl. I turned to the waitress. “Boiled.”

And this is why I feel like a bit of a traitor for posting this version. No, these pierogi are not deep-fried. But they do spend a few minutes getting browned in butter, and that’s probably not the healthiest thing I could have done.

But wait! They are also boiled. What a great compromise. In fact, I’m pretty sure that my mother – who is definitely reading this – won’t be too disappointed.

…One can hope.

So. About making pieorgi. The first thing you need is a helper. One person rolls out the dough and cuts out the circles, and one person places the filling on top and crimps them closed.

Sure, you can do it all yourself. But it will take forever to make enough for a crowd. Of course, like all things, it depends how you roll. Some people would have a couple of pierogi and a salad, and call it dinner. And some people are ready to slap me right now. Moving right along.

The other thing to make sure you have is the sour cream. These little potato dumplings are gentle in flavor, and the sour cream adds a lot.

And if you don’t have tons of time and you don’t have a helper, you should probably just make the pierogi lasagna. Say hi to it for me.

One year ago: Chocolate chip cookie dough truffles

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