Poland , Poland, that occurs on the Day of
St. Hyacinth Traditionally considered
peasant food, pierogi eventually gained popularity and spread throughout all social classes, including the
nobility. Cookbooks from the 17th century describe how during that era, pierogi were considered a staple of the Polish diet, and each holiday had its own special kind of pierogi created. They have different shapes, fillings and cooking methods. Important events like weddings had their own special type of pierogi
kurniki – baked pie filled with
chicken. Also, pierogi were made especially for mournings or wakes, and some for caroling season in January. In the east baked pierogi are a common and well-liked Christmas dish. They were stuffed with potatoes, cheese, cabbage, mushrooms, buckwheat, or millet. The most famous is the
Biłgoraj pierogi stuffed with buckwheat, potatoes, and cheese and then baked in the oven. Pierogi are an important part of Polish festive seasons, particularly
Christmas Eve (
Wigilia) and
Christmastide. They are also served during public events, markets or festivals in a variety of forms and tastes, ranging from sweet to salty and spicy. At the 2007 Pierogi Festival in Kraków, 30,000 pierogi were consumed daily. Polish pierogi are often filled with fresh quark, boiled and mashed potatoes, and fried onions. This type is known in Polish as
pierogi ruskie ("
Ruthenian pierogi", often mistakenly called Russian by foreigners). Other popular pierogi in Poland are filled with ground meat, mushrooms and cabbage, or for dessert an assortment of fruits (berries, with strawberries or blueberries the most common). Sweet pierogi are usually served with sour cream mixed with sugar, and savory pierogi with bacon fat and bacon bits. Poles traditionally serve two types of pierogi for Christmas Eve supper. One kind is filled with sauerkraut and dried mushrooms, anothersmall
uszka filled only with dried wild mushroomsis served in clear
barszcz. These dumplings are notable in Ukrainian traditions and folklore. They appear frequently in folk songs, literature, and humor, where they are associated with abundance, comfort, and everyday joy. During festive occasions such as Christmas Eve, they are regarded as a symbol of prosperity and well-being. A long-standing custom involves placing a coin inside one of the dumplings, with the belief that whoever finds it will have good fortune and wealth in the coming year. A yearly festival commemorating varenyky is held at the Ukrainian ski resort town of
Bukovel in the Carpathian Mountains. In 2013, a snow monument to varenyky was made in Bukovel, and was submitted to the
Guinness Book of Records as the biggest snow varenyk in the world. In Ukrainian tradition, varenyky were equated with a young moon due to the similar shape, and were used as part of pagan and sacrificial rituals. For example, cheese varenyky would be sacrificed near water springs, and farmers would also believe that varenyky helped bring a rich harvest, so they took homemade dumplings with them to the fields.
German-speaking regions The common term
Pirogge (pl.
Piroggen) describes all kinds of Eastern European filled dumplings and buns, including pierogi, pirozhkis and
pirogs. Certain types of piroggen, both boiled and baked, were common fare for Germans living in Eastern Europe and the Baltic are still prepared by their descendants living there and in Germany. In particular, baked pīrādziņi are known as
Kurländer Speckkuchen ("
Courland bacon/speck pies") in the cuisine of
Baltic Germans.
Schlutzkrapfen closely resemble pierogi; they are common in
Tirol and northern Italy's German-speaking region of
South Tyrol, and are occasionally found in
Bavaria. Fillings may include meat or potatoes, but the most widespread filling is a combination of spinach and quark (
Topfen) or
ricotta. Another similar Austrian dish, known as
Kärntner Nudel (
Carinthian noodles), is made with a wide range of fillings, from meat, mushrooms, potato or quark to apples, pears or
mint. These regional specialties differ significantly from the most common
Swabian filled dumplings known as
Maultaschen.
Hungary In
Hungarian cuisine, the
derelye is similar to the pierogi, consisting of pasta pockets filled with jam, cottage cheese, or sometimes meat. Derelye is consumed primarily as a festive food for special occasions such as weddings; it is also eaten for regular meals, but this tradition has become rare.
Romania and Moldova In
Romania and
Moldova, a similar recipe is called
colțunași, with regional varieties such as
piroști in
Transylvania and
Bukovina regions and
chiroște in
Moldavia region.
Colțunași is either a dessert filled with jam (usually plum), fresh sour cherries, or cottage cheese, or savory, filled with
dill-seasoned cheese (
telemea or
urdă), mashed potatoes, or chopped meat. The dough is made with
wheat flour and the colțunași are boiled in salted water, pan-fried in oil, or baked in the oven. The word is a cognate with Slavic
kalduny, a type of dumplings. In both Bukovina and Transylvania, the name
piroști is used in Romanian families of German or Slavic origin and the filling can also be a whole, fresh, seedless plum. The term
colțunaș is used by native Romanian families and are usually filled with cottage cheese or quark and served topped with
sour cream smântână, traditionally called
colțunași cu smântână.
Russia and Belarus Vareniki are most often filled with potatoes (sometimes mixed with mushrooms),
quark cheese, cabbage, beef, and berries. They can be topped with fried onions and bacon, or butter, and served with sour cream. This Ukrainian dish became especially popular in Russia during the Soviet period, when it became part of the menu of public catering and international
Soviet cuisine.
Pelmeni are significantly different; they are smaller, shaped differently and usually filled with
ground meat (pork, lamb, beef, fish) or mushrooms as well as salt, pepper, and sometimes herbs and onions. In modern Russian,
pirozhki always mean a baked, in oven, or sometimes in a frying pan, usually under the lid, dough with filling. For dough with fillings, cooked in boiling water, exact naming is used – vareniki, pelmeni, pozy (steamed), etc. In Belarus, its close proximity to Poland, Ukraine, and Russia helps create a unique blend which takes up all three.
Kalduny are the result, and are one of the most recognizable foods from Belarus.
Russian Mennonite cuisine Due to centuries of close-knit community and mass migration from the
Netherlands, northern
Prussia,
the Russian Empire, and the Americas, the
Russian Mennonites developed a unique ethnicity and cuisine. In Russian
Mennonite cuisine the pierogi is more commonly called
vereniki and almost always is stuffed with
cottage cheese and served with a thick white cream gravy called
schmaunt fat. Russian Mennonites will also stuff the
vereniki with fruit such as
Saskatoon berries or
blueberries. It is often accompanied with farmer sausage (
formavorscht) or ham. Mennonite-style
vereniki is no longer common in Poland, Russia, or Ukraine, but is very common in the
Canadian prairies,
Chihuahua, Mexico,
Paraguay,
Bolivia, and other places where Russian Mennonites settled.
Slovakia A traditional dish in
Slovak cuisine is , dumplings filled with salty cheese mixed with mashed potatoes. are served with some more (mixed with milk or sour cream, so it has a liquid consistency and serves as a dip) and topped with bacon or fried onion. In Slovakia, are semicircular in shape. Along with , is one of
Slovakia's national dishes. Some other varieties include
pirohy filled with mashed potatoes, apples, jam, or
quark.
Bosnia and Herzegovina Klepe are popular in Sarajevo, filled with minced meat, and topped with sour cream, garlic, and paprika.
Slovenia Ajdovi krapi (literally buckwheat carps) are a dish popular in the northeastern and Alpine regions of Slovenia. Made with buckwheat rather than wheat flour and filled with a mixture of cottage cheese (
skuta), millet, and fried onions, they are traditionally topped with pork fat crisps, fried bacon, or fried onion, but today often with butter breadcrumbs. Along with
žganci and
štruklji, they form a trio of buckwheat-based dishes typical of
Slovenian cuisine.
Turkey Piruhi is a traditional dish made in some parts of
Anatolia which was also existed in
Ottoman court cuisine. It is usually made with wheat flour and egg and filled with a mixture of
Tulum cheese, parsley, and onion. Served with toasted walnuts in butter.
United States and Canada , Toronto Pierogi were brought to the United States and Canada by Central and Eastern European immigrants. They are particularly common in areas with large Polish or Ukrainian populations, such as the Province of
Alberta, Pittsburgh, Chicago, and New York City (particularly in the East Village of Manhattan and Greenpoint in Brooklyn) along with its New Jersey suburbs. Pierogi were at first a family food among immigrants as well as being served in ethnic restaurants. The pierogi in America initially came from
Cleveland, Ohio, when the first documented sale of pierogi was made at the Marton House Tavern in Cleveland in 1928. In the post–
World War II era, freshly cooked pierogi became a staple of fundraisers by ethnic churches. By the 1960s, pierogi were a common supermarket item in the frozen food aisles in many parts of the United States and Canada, and are still found in grocery stores today. Numerous towns with Central and Eastern European heritage celebrate the pierogi. They have become a symbol of Polish-American cultural identity. Many families make them together for Christmas. The city of
Whiting, Indiana, celebrates the food at its
Pierogi Fest every July. Pierogi are also commonly associated with Cleveland, where there are yearly events such as the
Slavic Village Pierogi Dash and the
Parma Run-Walk for Pierogies.
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, also celebrates pierogi. There is a "
pierogi race" at every home
Pittsburgh Pirates baseball game. In the race, six runners wearing pierogi costumes race toward a finish line. In 1993, the village of
Glendon, Alberta erected a roadside tribute to this culinary creation: a fiberglass perogy (preferred local spelling), complete with fork. The United States has a substantial pierogi market because of its large Central and Eastern European immigrant populations. Unlike other countries with newer populations of European settlers, the modern pierogi is found in a wide selection of flavors throughout grocery stores in the United States. Many of these grocery-brand pierogi contain non-traditional ingredients to appeal to American tastes, including
spinach,
jalapeño, and
chicken. Pierogi enjoyed a brief popularity as a sports food when
Paula Newby-Fraser adopted them as her food of choice for the biking portion of the 1989 Hawaii
Ironman Triathlon. For more than a decade thereafter,
Mrs. T's (the largest American pierogi manufacturer) sponsored triathlons, some professional triathletes and "fun runs" around the country. For many triathletes, pierogi represented an alternative to pasta as a way to boost their carbohydrate intakes. According to pierogi manufacturer Mrs. T's, based in
Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, pierogi consumption in the United States is largely concentrated in a geographical region dubbed the "Pierogi Pocket", an area including New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Chicago, Detroit, parts of the northern Midwest and southern New England which accounts for 68 percent of annual US pierogi consumption.
Canada has a large
Polish population as well as
Ukrainian populations, the latter being particularly concentrated in the
Prairie provinces. Pierogi (known locally as perogies) are common throughout the country. The Canadian market for pierogi is second only to that of the U.S. market, the latter having been the destination of choice for the majority of Central and Eastern European immigrants before and during World War II. National chain restaurants in Canada feature the dish or variations.
Boston Pizza has a sandwich and a pizza flavored to taste like pierogies, while
Smitty's serves theirs as an appetizer deep-fried with a side of
salsa.
United Kingdom in the
Crystal Palace Triangle, London Pierogi are regarded as a symbol of the
Polish community in Britain and have become a relatively well-known dish. ==Lazy noodles and lazy varenyky==