How to Make Potato-Cheddar Pierogi at Home

Test cook Bryan Roof teaches host Julia Collin Davison the secrets to tackling authentic Pittsburg-style Potato-Cheddar Pierogi at home.

ABOUT US: Located in Boston’s Seaport District in the historic Innovation and Design Building, America's Test Kitchen features 15,000 square feet of kitchen space including multiple photography and video studios. It is the home of Cook’s Illustrated magazine and Cook’s Country magazine and is the workday destination for more than 60 test cooks, editors, and cookware specialists. Our mission is to test recipes over and over again until we understand how and why they work and until we arrive at the best version.

If you like us, follow us:

[peterjack]

Ukrainian"s settlers in Saskatchewan, Canada made varenyky, pirogi or as kids we called by different name (Ukrainian word). My Mom and Grandma boiled them and baked them in onions and butter. We served them with sour cream and chive topping. We also cut the sour cream with cottage cheese.

[stanleykeith]

My Dads Mother and Dad both came from Poland and came to Pittsburgh, Pa. Grand Pap worked in a Steel Mill, as did my Father, Uncles, and Brother. My Mother would add the fried onion to the potato and cheese filling and chill in the frig. I'm still in Pittsburgh and believe it or not had some this morning, 4/7/23 Good Friday. Pittsburgh Pirates are playing Ball @ 4 12 pm today. Season Opener ! Go Pirates !

[anitahall]

My mother's father was from Poland and immigrated to Saskatchewan. Needless to say, I grew up making and feasting on pierogies. The potato and cheddar cheese was a family favorite. But we included some bacon bits and diced onion in the filling. BTW, IF there are leftovers, pierogies are amazing fried the next morning for breakfast.

[tiacho]

Growing up, all of my Polish friends used to eat pierogi made with a dry cottage style cheese. I think I saw it in a European food store in blocks that look like feta or queso fresco and called "farmer's cheese".

Boiled, then tossed in bacon fat sautéd onions with crumbled bacon is my cold day comfort food.

[mikewilkins]

My mom learned from her mom (immigrant from Ukraine) to make Pierogie, stuffed cabbage, etc. At first, I didn’t like it but eventually loved it.
We, as kids, were not to get up from table till we had tried everything ugh. We could barely walk after holiday meal. God Bless Baba n mom.

[MyHeap]

I grew up in a polish / German neighborhood. Pierogies were a favorite of mine as a kid. I made you recipe and I will tell you, this brought the wonderful memories flooding back. Great recipe and presentation. Thanks!

Joe

[diannaquist]

I made these from your recipe once before and loved them. I just needed to watch it again to freshen my knowledge.

[gyozakeynsianism]

Zero percent Polish, 100% pierogi lover. Will try this one soon. Thank you!

[niemaks]

Bryan is the first American that made the dough like we do in Poland. Next time try to do one of our traditional type of pierogi we have one similiar to this recipe but instead of cheddar we use cottage cheese and we add some chopped onions to this kind of filling, we call them Ruskie (Similliar to Russia but the name comes from a historic region of Poland when western Ukraine was a part of Poland so it`s also a Ukrainian traditional dish) the others are with mince and onion and the last one probably the most popular here with cabbage and mushrooms that we serve on christmas. But we like to add anything to pierogi we make fruit fillings for example. If the dough was made like we are doing it no one will get upset

[jessfromdablock]

one of my favorite things about atk is all the interesting factoids i would have never known! makes the recipes even more delicious knowing how it came about in my opinion :)

[lauras]

I just made these for the first time tonight. Fantastic recipe. I fried the onions and perogies a bit on the darker side. crispy. Thank you for sharing 🥰

[donnabonacquisti]

Just want to say that I made these today. They were easy and came out delicious! Thanks for the video.

[sherriek]

I love them baked in the oven tossed with olive oils..put with crispy caramelized onion and sour cream yummy

[LP-lehi]

I made these today and for the first time ever they turned out perfect. I love pierogi but always had a problem with the dough. This recipe is easy with the Kitchen Aid mixer kneading the dough and making it easy to roll out and work with. They were tender and delicious. I couldn't find bread flour so I used regular flour. I will try it next time with the bread flour. I will be making these again and again.

[GRUNTFETE]

Luv you guys. You have been my Saturday afternoon staple for many years now.

[Angelinaa]

Boiled then fried sauerkraut and mushrooms pierogi are the best 👌

[jasonyoung]

I live in Connecticut, my town and the surrounding towns are super Polish; the pierogi & golumpki here are amazing.

[johnstelmach]

I'm 100% polish with polish immigrant grandparents. In this country there are many people who use sour cream and eggs in the dough. I watched my grandmother make the dough, no sour cream or eggs. I've been to the southern part of Poland twice ( Sanok and Krakow) for cooking tours no sour cream or eggs. This part of Poland is where my family is from, and my joke is that we couldn't afford luxuries like eggs and sour cream. The dough that I make is almost exactly like your Chinese dumpling dough. In fact, I now make it exactly like you do in the dumpling video from America's test Kitchen. Give it a try, the dough comes out soft just like in the homeland!

[brendashelton]

Our neighbor was polish and we had perogis at her house often we used sauerkraut and onions as filling boiled then then fried them in hot oil....delicious we made them for years...now i have a wheat intolerance so sadly i can no longer have them...im going to try a gluten free perogi and see how it does...cant wait to test them.

[With-one-wing]

Made these for dinner tonight. Loved the potato filling. The dough was just ok and hubby didn’t like the texture. It was hard to roll out. Kept wanting to bounce back, even though I let it rest. The dough recipe was different than every other recipe I looked at. It was the only one that used bread flour and baking powder. Will keep the recipe for the filling but will continue to try other doughs.