Pierogies from Pittsburgh
Meet Helen Wisniewski from Pittsburgh, PA. In the photos below, you can see how Helen makes homemade pierogies. After decades of making homemade pierogies, she doesn’t follow a recipe, but it’s all about the technique—you can find a recipe online. Helen is the mother of three grown sons, the middle son is a long-time friend of ours. Every year she visits Art in Costa Mesa. When she visits she always cooks two traditional Polish comfort food dishes: satisfying potato cheese dumplings called pierogies and halupkis, savory stuffed cabbage rolls.

Potato Cheese Pierogies
How To Make Homemade Pierogies
According to About.com, the people of Pittsburg eat 11 times the pierogies of any other city in the nation and pierogi fillings range from traditional potato and cheese to sweet prune. Helen makes the traditional potato and cheese. Because of our 20+ year friendship with Art and his wife, Karen, we are one of the privileged few who are invited to dinner to savor one of these delicious and comforting Polish delicacies. This year I brought my camera so I could photograph and record the art of pierogi making.
- The dough
- Art demonstrates the art of rolling out the dough
- Faster than the speed of light
- Rolled out thin and cut into squares
- Potato cheese filling
- Helen has a system
- Crimping the edges firmly
- That’s a whole lotta pierogies
- Place on a baking sheet
- Large pot of boiling water
- Onions sautéed in butter
- Potato Cheese Pierogies
Helen admitted that it is quite a process and she doesn’t do all this at home anymore, she endorses Mrs. T’s Pierogies if you’re not up to the process 🙂 If you would like to make some homemade pierogies you can find a recipe here or at Food Network.
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