Blueberry Peroghies
I know, who makes blueberry peroghies anymore? Nobody, that’s who.
And I never have either, until the subject of Alberta cuisine arose earlier this week – and while we’re known for our beef, bison, canola, and really a ton of other great ingredients, there are few dishes that get up and scream Alberta. But homemade peroghies – they truly are the food of the prairies. And sure, you could stuff them with any number of potato-cheese-bacon-saurkraut combos, but I wanted to give berries a go – in fact, I suddenly felt as if it would be unpatriotic to not make them. And besides, I wanted to know if they’d translate well into little doughy two-bite pies of sorts. Browned butter, berries and sour cream-oh my.
Peroghies fall into that category of foods hardly made from scratch anymore because there’s no need. At one time perogy bees were the social events of the season – the original social medium – wherein folks would gather to catch up, gossip, discuss politics and together solve the problem of how to feed their families. This is what people did before Starbucks, I guess.
Multitasking is not new – at peroghy bees thousands of peroghies could be assembled in an afternoon to feed families, raise funds, or in preparation for social events. I love the thought that at one time weddings didn’t have ginormous trade shows and magazines and everyone just got married in the church where they lived, and the community got together to make peroghies and dainties to serve afterward. Is that just in my head, having grown up watching Little House on the Prairie? I loved that show. I so wanted to be Mary, except for the blind part.
This dough is one of many versions out there, and simple to mix together. The finished perigees were boiled, then scooped out of the pot with a slotted spoon and browned in a hot pan with butter until they were golden and crisp on both sides.
You don’t have to fill them with blueberries, of course, if you don’t want to – take the leftover mashed potatoes from dinner, add a handful of grated cheese, and set the kids at the kitchen table with an after-school project.
OR. Gather a few pals and bring back the bee. Which brings me to my idea. (Insert eye-roll via Mike.) I think it’s been too long since our last playdate, which was before Christmas, come to think of it. Should we have our own peroghy bee? Should we? Should we?
I’ll make dough, and get some bubbly, everyone can bring a filling, and we’ll open the back door and let the spring air breeze in while we cover the house with dough and flour. And I’ll enlist Mike to clean-up duty with the promise of homemade peroghies with bacon, onions and sour cream.
And blueberry peroghies for dessert.
Blueberry Peroghies
AuthorJulieAdapted from Canadian Living.
In a large bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder and salt. In a small bowl (or Pyrex measuring cup) stir together the butter, milk and egg; add to the flour mixture and stir until you have a dry, shaggy mixture. Add the water about a third at a time, until you have a soft, slightly sticky dough. Knead it about 10 times, then cover with a towel or plastic wrap and let rest on the countertop for 20 minutes.
To make the filling, stir together the sugar and flour; stir in the blueberries. On lightly floured surface, roll out the dough to a scant 1/4-inch thickness. Using a 3-inch round cutter, cut into rounds. Stretch each round slightly; fill with a spoonful of the blueberry mixture, ensuring you get some of the sugar-flour in there as well.
Pull dough over filling into semicircle; pinch edges together to seal. Cover with tea towel. Repeat with remaining dough and filling. Freeze in a single layer or cook immediately.
In large pot of lightly salted water, boil perogies in batches, until they float to the top and the dough is tender, about 10 minutes. With slotted spoon, transfer to dish; drizzle with butter to prevent sticking. If you like, brown the well-drained boiled perogies in a hot pan with butter until crisp and golden; dribble the remaining butter from the pan overtop. Serve with sour cream or whipped cream. Makes about 3 dozen peroghies.
Ingredients
Directions
In a large bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder and salt. In a small bowl (or Pyrex measuring cup) stir together the butter, milk and egg; add to the flour mixture and stir until you have a dry, shaggy mixture. Add the water about a third at a time, until you have a soft, slightly sticky dough. Knead it about 10 times, then cover with a towel or plastic wrap and let rest on the countertop for 20 minutes.
To make the filling, stir together the sugar and flour; stir in the blueberries. On lightly floured surface, roll out the dough to a scant 1/4-inch thickness. Using a 3-inch round cutter, cut into rounds. Stretch each round slightly; fill with a spoonful of the blueberry mixture, ensuring you get some of the sugar-flour in there as well.
Pull dough over filling into semicircle; pinch edges together to seal. Cover with tea towel. Repeat with remaining dough and filling. Freeze in a single layer or cook immediately.
In large pot of lightly salted water, boil perogies in batches, until they float to the top and the dough is tender, about 10 minutes. With slotted spoon, transfer to dish; drizzle with butter to prevent sticking. If you like, brown the well-drained boiled perogies in a hot pan with butter until crisp and golden; dribble the remaining butter from the pan overtop. Serve with sour cream or whipped cream. Makes about 3 dozen peroghies.
My Mom still makes blueberry perogies every summer! She only uses fresh blueberries that she picks herself and then freezes the perogies to have for Christmas Eve for dessert. We boil them and have them with honey and cream. We also make our own cottage cheese, potato and cheddar, and saurkraut perogies for Christmas Eve and also to enjoy throughout the year. But the blueberry ones are saved for Christmas.
You know I’ll be there!
Whoa – I have never even heard of this phenomenon, and it seems like the coolest thing ever! I love blueberries, and pierogies are on my short list to make soon. Did it translate into more of a savory dish, or a dessert?
I made potatoe and cheese perogies for the first time a month ago. I was surprised at how easy they were. Love this idea to fill them with blueberries!
Would love to come to a perogie bee!
Your “open the back door” line makes me think, again, that we’re are actually related somehow. I can’t make it to a Calgary perogie bee but just may have one here in Ontario anyway! John and the girls LOVE them and I think it would cool to make a whole meal out of differently stuffed perogies. Hmmm.. the possibilities are endless…
Yes! Yes! Yes! Oh gosh I will do my best to make it!
Julie, do you like this dough or the Baba dough better? (the one with 5 cups flour and boiling water)
Om my goodness!!! My Ukrainian grandmother used to make these. We would have dinner with the potato and cheese pirohy ( as we call them)and then finish with blueberry. We would roll off our chairs feeling like one big dough ball. Delicious!
I still have her original dough recipe.
Fact: When I moved here many years ago from Newfoundland I had never even heard of perogies!
I’ll be there, you bet!
I love the idea of a peroghy bee! And I love the idea of eating those blueberry peroghies – I can imagine them with some ricotta in the filling as well. Yum.
I wish I lived in Calgary….. Julie, you’re so amazing and generous!
I would be there so quickly! Have a Peroghy bee!
A perogy bee is the best idea ever! I’d be there in a heartbeat.
If I’m not picking up pieces of random plaster off my floor, I will be there.
I need to stock my freezer. And also, blueberrie perigees are the best ever with vanilla yogurt. For breakfast. No joke.
WTF is a bluberrie? You know what I mean.
My baba and aunties used to make blueberry and starwberry perogies every summer with the fruit we picked. Nothing beats wild blueberry perogies or wild blueberry anything for that matter! I still make potatoe/cheese perogies, but I forgot about the fruit filled ones.
Thank you for posting this – I am reliving many fond memories of summers spent in northern manitoba, days filled with good things to eat, fresh air and the joyful sounds of my baba and aunties laughing in the kitchen.
My friends and I just had a doughnut bee a few weeks ago based on a previous post of yours. I made them told my friends about it and they came over in part for a tutorial and also as one of them has a son with a peanut allergy and he never has doughnuts. It was a wonderful day! Funny thing is we talked about doing a perogie day as some of them had never made them either. Also a holubshki (who know how to spell cabbage rolls the real way!). Reading this makes me need to confirm a date – thanks for the reminder and ideas!
I do………holubtsi!
Sorry, Susannah, couldn’t resist.
My Hungarian mother used to make “summer” perogies; she’d half a blue plum, remove the seed, and then coat the plum with a sugar/cinnamon mix and use that for the filling. Once the perogies were boiled, she’d fry up breadcrumbs in browned butter, add a handful of sugar, and then toss the drained perogies in this mixture for a minute or two before serving them to her hungry family. They were SO good.
Those look delicious! So tempting to make some right now!
I’m in!
fry up breadcrumbs in browned butter and sugar!!!!….oh my can we please try this too!
We make blueberry pierogi all the time; it’s a family favorite! My own personal favorite is potato & sauerkraut. It’s definitely fun to get together and get everybody involved in making them! Yours look delicious. 🙂
Glad to see that the recipe said ‘blueberry or saskatoon berry’. There should only be saskatoon berry perogies;)
DH makes 9-10 dozen potato and cheese perogies every Christmas. And we once put cherry pie filling in some of the leftovers. But oh these blueberry ones sound good! I showed them to DH and even he said we’d have to give them a try, although I don’t think it’ll be happening until next Christmas. (Then again, if we only made a few instead of 9-10 dozen, I don’t see why we couldn’t make them sooner.) Yum!
Woohoo! I’ll be there!
When? When is it?
MMmmm. When I was about ten, my mom and I spent an afternoon making pirohy with a lady in the Kootenays. We made all the standards which I don’t even remember, BUT then we made SOUR CHERRY ones for dessert. I still remember them, and I still talk about them!(It’s been decades).
btw: I think just about anything in a dough pocket is a winner, but really the dessert pirohy are amazing.
Last year some girlfriends of 4o years (one from Lamont) got together in Edmonton to have a peroghy bee! What fun and I learned a whole bunch about the early Ukrainian experience on the prairies. Came home with bags of tasty dough treats and definitely want to do it again. If your date is sometime soon when the QEII might be in good shape, I could drive down and join you. Please let us know. I had wanted to know about a blueberry filling but we never got there, so this post is wonderful! I’d really like Cathy H to share her Grandmother’s dough recipe. When my friends and I made them, we used the water the potatoes were boiled in for the dough…kinda like adding in pasta water to the sauce, I guess.
Yes, please count me in…sounds like fun. I have been working for the last two gatherings so do hope this one will work. I will be waiting to hear the date and time!
Oh Julie, I wish I still lived in Calgary – I’d be there in a flash! This reminds me so much of the warenicki (pronounced varenicky) from my Mennonite tradition – we have them filled with dry cottage cheese or fruit (saskatoons are the best, followed by plums, cherries, apples in that order), with Mennonite farmer’s sausage and cream gravy. Ok, that’s basically cholesterol with butter on it, but warenicki are so much trouble to make that we only get them maybe once a year if we’re lucky. 🙂 Thanks for a great post!
How fun!
I wish I lived in Calgary so I could come to your house and make perogies! My mom still makes perogies every year for Christmas and while I suck at pinching part I’m really quite good at the frying and eating parts of the process. Have fun with your bee – if you ever wanna bring it on the road to Sask I’m totally in 🙂
I would love to attend a perogie partie (perogy party?) What date are you thinking of?
I would love to attend too, but have recently been diagnosed as gluten intolerant–does anyone have any recipes using something other than wheat flour?
Blueberry perogies have been on the menu at the New York Bagel Cafe in Edmonton for years. They’re fantastic.
oh my the perogy bee sounds great. My MIL and I use to get together to make pies at harvest time. I really miss it
Sounds like fun! I’ve never made perogies before so it’d be great to learn!
Julie, I just discovered your website (yes, I know, I am WAYYY behind) and I LOVE IT!!! I have all of your cookbooks and cook from them frequently. I am a BIG fan. You are a truly gifted person and I thank you for sharing your gift with the rest of us!!!
My 7 year old daughter and I are going to attempt to make these this afternoon when she gets home from school…wish us luck!!!
Pick a date and I’ll be there!
YES!!! WE need a perogy bee! I love backseat gourmet’s dough recipe (swear by it – have converted my family!) and I have a pampered chef little pie maker thing that is the perfect size for cutting out the dough!!! Yes – please – have a bee – I will clear my calendar…. P.S. I just ate my last homemade perogy (from Ukrainian new year’s) last week 🙁
I return – I will show you how to make those lovely photo montages!
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Blueberry perogies have been one of my favorite meals all my life. My mom used to make perogies for supper and hers always have a fancy braid-like edging on it. It took a few tries but I finally got the hang of that darn “braided” edge – knowing that I took the extra time to make that edge always seems to make them taste better. We also made more of a sweet cottage cheese perogy to go with the blueberry ones. YUM – so I guess it’s perogies for supper tonight!!
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Our family still makes the Blueberry Perogies. They all love them.
My family makes them… mmmm… with heavy cream poured on top and sprinkled with sugar, but I also heard honey is good, haven’t tried it through.
Yuuuuummmm!!