The Great Pierogi Reckoning

One of my kindergarten students went to a farm over their three-day hagwon vacation and picked some potatoes. ("On my vacation, I found out what it was like to be a day laborer!") Her mother, in a gesture you see far more often in Korea than in the US, gave both me and her "homeroom" teacher a giant shopping bag full of potatoes from the trip.


Mmm...

And as far as I'm concerned, there's only one thing you do with potatoes: starchy Eastern European goodness! Unfortunately, my kitchen in Korea is pretty much a short corridor with a fridge, four burners, a microwave, and a sink that takes up all the counter space. Making anything in large quantities is a bit of a challenge.

While I can more or less make pierogi by heart, I did keep this pierogi recipe open while I worked. It's extremely detailed with lots of tips, and recipes for a few different fillings as well.

Step 1: Assemble the other necessary filling ingredients.

The above-linked recipe recommends making the filling on one day, and then making the dough and packing up the little pierogi on the second. In addition to things like bowls and a hand mixer, on my first trip to HomePlus I picked up two important other ingredients for the filling:





Step 2: Filling Prep.

Chop onions, grate cheese, peel potatoes. Peel a lot of a potatoes.



Yes, I am doing this on my stove. I wasn't exaggerating when I said I didn't have any counter space!

This part took the better part of my day.

Step 3: Dough prep.

This is probably the easiest part: nothing more than flour, water, an egg, and some salt.



Step 4: Putting it all together.

For most labor-intensive step, this and prepping the filling are just about tied. This part is definitely the messiest, though, which is why I only have a picture of the final product (which will stay frozen for now):



Twenty down, one hundred and eighty to go!