The Pierogi Pass Down
I was excited to spend Christmas with my in-laws this year, but there is one family tradition that would be sorely missed: Wigilia. Wigilia is a Polish Christmas Eve celebration consisting of meat-free meals, and it’s my family’s way of celebrating and sharing our Polish heritage. My mom usually makes dozens upon dozens of pierogi in cheese, cabbage, and apple flavors, which to me, are the symbol of Christmas time. So, on the weekend before Christmas, I embarked on a personal mission to learn how to make pierogi from my mother.
My mom first learned how to make pierogi from Polish cookbooks, but when the dough was tougher than expected, she watched her Babci make them and took notes. These notes are scribbled into her cookbooks, and this recipe is what she taught me.
We started with the most difficult stuffings: apple and cabbage. Over the years, cabbage has become my favorite with its buttery filling and peppery kick. Little did I know that it was the hardest to make.
It requires chopping and boiling and chopping and sautéing and pepper. LOTS of pepper. This is hours worth of work on the stuffings alone.
And then there’s the dough: delicate and not overworked. It takes time and patience to get it to the perfect consistency because though simple, it is the core of the whole dish.
I learned how to make pierogi with my mom, but I also learned firsthand how much time and effort she puts in every holiday to keep this tradition alive. She usually binges all of the Bing Crosby Christmas movies while spending entire days in the kitchen.
Mom filled the pierogi dough with a heaping spoonful of shredded cinnamon apple.
She folds the dough over the filling to seal the juices inside.
The day went so well with my mom that I ran home excited to make my own. On the first try, I botched the dough, it turned out too dry, and I called my mom right away. Discouraged, I threw it away, and made the next batches with utmost care. Single batches soon became double batches. For three days, I turned my kitchen into a pierogi factory. In the end, it looked like a flour snowstorm had exploded across the countertops.
The finished pierogi looked decent, not like my mom’s, but they passed the test when my husband and I tried them.
As we took them on the four hour drive to my in-laws’ house, some of the cheese pierogi dough stuck together, ripping the exteriors apart and creating holes. The filling started to leak out. I felt like I failed. We made the most of the situation by frying the broken dough and cheese in butter and water. They tasted like something else entirely, but something good nonetheless.
In the end, the pierogi were eaten and enjoyed over a holiday celebration and The Nativity Story. There were new traditions, fun, games…and with the pierogi, it felt like a little piece of my home and traditions were there.
This year, my mom didn’t turn on White Christmas or The Bells of St. Mary’s. She spent the day guiding me through her tradition, and it’s this tradition that has continued through many generations, even after my Babci died. With the hustle and bustle of the season, it’s sometimes difficult to take a moment to turn off the radio or the TV and just talk, listen, and enjoy the company of loved ones. I look forward to passing this tradition onto my own family someday with the same care and attention my mother gave me.