welcome friends welcome back to the kitchen welcome back to what's in my
pantry pandemic Edition so if you're watching this in the future just a recap
global pandemic and the world is shutting down because of the corona
virus and there has been over the last week or so where we live a real run on
the grocery stores people panic buy and the store shelves have been empty
there's no need to panic buy although it seems that at this point the panic
buying is over we went to our grocery store yesterday afternoon to pick up a
few things that we absolutely had to have and couldn't find them
but the store shelves are being restocked the supply chain is still fine
the stores aren't going to close it's not going to dry up it's going to be a
long haul to get out of this but we're gonna be ok in terms of food security I
think especially if you live in an area that already has food security I
understand that for a lot of people this is going to be really tough for a long
time into the future which is unfortunate so if you have the means
please help out those in need go out there be a good citizen if there's
someone on your street that is already shut-in because of age or because of
health concerns knock on the door slip a note with your
phone number through their letter slot tell them that you're there that you can
help them and you know if that is just as simple as going to the grocery store
and picking up some staples for them and dropping them off on their porch please
do that if you can if you can't I totally understand that because there's
a lot of people who are out of work although I'm sure these a couple days
ahead from when this is going to be released so just now before I came into
the studio the Canadian government outlined their aid package for helping
people who are going to be out of work and for helping business owners who who
are going to and I think the aid package is going to help a lot of people it's
still gonna be tough though it still is going to be tough so after all that
rambling sitting in the kitchen I'm going to make pierogies
although these are not necessarily strictly traditional pierogies and they
they go by many names this is a style of food that many cultures use essentially
a dumpling filled with something I have not made pierogies in a long time but I
know that the ingredients are something that most people have in their kitchen
so into this pot I put two small potatoes
I've got salted water in there I had a shallot hanging out in my fridge so I'm
gonna put it in because I like that flavor in my potato but you could put in
an onion if you only have green onion put in green onions if you have a brown
onion chop it up and put it in white onion whatever kind of onion you have
you can put that in I'm also going to throw in some horseradish
because I really like horseradish in my mashed potatoes so I'm gonna put some in
don't have horseradish maybe you've got a jar of wasabi put in some wasabi that
would work really well too essentially you you can flavor this potato mixture
any way you want as long as the potato clumps together nicely later so you
don't want to put in a lot of cream or a lot of butter although you can put in
sour cream or cottage cheese I mean this is this is why I'm doing this recipe
because it is so widely open to interpretation so I'm gonna let those
boil away until they're softened and then we'll mash them and then we'll let
them cool we're gonna move on to the dough now again the dough is pretty
flexible and open to interpretation
there are so many ways that you can make this dough there are recipes that use
eggs that don't use eggs there are recipes that use sour cream that don't
use sour cream that use milk not milk pretty much what you need to do is just
reach a certain consistency you could make this recipe I've got two eggs in
here and I'm putting in some salt you could make this recipe just with flour
and water and mix the flour and water to a consistency that you get a nice dough
that you can roll out it doesn't have to be too complicated but because I've got
two eggs I'm gonna use two eggs if you had sour cream go ahead and put in some
sour cream leave out one of the eggs leave out both
of the eggs and just use sour cream I'm also gonna put in some butter because I
like a little bit of butter in with mine but I understand as well if you don't
have Bart butter don't put it in you could also put in margarine if you've
what you use is margarine go ahead put that in really what it comes down to is
you're gonna see the consistency of the dough that I end up with and that's what
you're looking for so you start off just whip these eggs a little bit and in with
the water okay so now I'm going to switch to a wooden spoon as always the
recipe is in the description box below the video and I give a range of the
amount of flour put in maybe half of the amount of flour give it a stir
wait for it to come together and then just slowly add in more flour until it
comes together into a ball and I'm pretty sure that everybody out there is
going to have flour in their cupboard I'm using all-purpose use whatever
you've got I looked at the grocery store when we were there and the flour aisle
was completely decimated empty shelves for the entire length of it so I know
that people have bought flour more flour than they buy at Christmastime so that's
come together nicely I'm just going to add in a little bit more and just keep
putting it in until I get a nice stiff ball of dough
now at some point it's advantageous to switch to your hands you don't need to
knead the dough but you want to make sure that it is not sticky but smooth
and elastic so at some point the the wooden spoon just doesn't work anymore
and you should get in there just with your hands you shouldn't be afraid to
cook with your hands even during this time because you've washed them right
always wash your hands I mean that's best practice and in the kitchen at any
time now this is coming together nicely and you might just put a little bit of
flour out on your out on your board and take it out of the bowl and just finish
mixing it okay the dough looks pretty good so I'm gonna put this in plastic
wrap I'm gonna wrap it tightly and I'm gonna let it hang out for a couple hours
before I roll it and move on you could make that dough to 3 days in advance
stick it in the fridge it'll be just fine come back to it later and make the
pierogi and it's also I mean that dough is not much different than a pasta dough
you could put that through a pasta roll or make it into noodles and and boil it
and cook it that way it would be really good
now our potatoes our potatoes need just a little bit more so here's what I'm
gonna do in the meantime once the potatoes are done I'm gonna drain them
I'm gonna put this cheese in I'm just using a cheddar cheese you could use any
cheese you want kind of cheese don't even have to use cheese if you don't
want cheese or if you don't have cheese totally fine I'm gonna mash it I'm not
going to add any liquid to it because we still want to have that potato to be
fairly firm when we go to stuff these so I'll see you back here in two seconds
for you a couple hours for me where we'll roll this out and we'll actually
assemble these back together okay a little bit of flour on the bench and
we're gonna roll this dough out fairly thin
so the dough is nice and thin now if the dough snaps back because it
probably will it did for me it always does that just means that the gluten
needs to relax so take a tea towel or two tea towels put it over top walk away
for ten minutes and then come back and it will relax and you'll be able to get
it quite thin rolled out really nicely this is a this is a pretty nice dough
and a little bit of flour underneath so that it doesn't stick my friends I come
with two sizes Julie brought the cookie cutter since I wasn't sure I didn't use
the cookie cutters for the cookies I decided to go freehand and that didn't
work out so well they still taste great they taste pretty that's all that
matters they do taste great so and somehow this one seems really small even
though that's two inch motional size most say to use a two inch cutter I look
at that and I think it's too small well these are probably more bite sizes
two and a half yeah that's true everything now is dark everything's big
okay so let's try the two and a half okay I stick with that and we'll cut
some out and then we'll fill them up okay and you can't reroll this dough
although it gets tough the second roll
okay so hands are clean filling pierogies has
always been a came job um in fact the last time we did this was probably what
Thunder Bay I was gonna say the last time we actually made pierogies from
scratch we lived in Thunder Bay that was a long time ago and it was it's one of
those things where a whole bunch of people get together and they make a ton
of pierogies festival size amount and then you know you take them home and you
freeze them or you you have a big party so um I always overfill mm-hmm so if we
use the scoop you won't be able to I don't know how to get out of the scoop
though yeah maybe that's a better one that's looked actually pretty good size
it doesn't resize it's just good it's it's the Scooby bit it's hard obviously
you've washed your hands right I did say that already yes okay I confirmed I've
washed my hands oh wow that's still even too much yeah
and cut that down by half and and so you know its first version it's gonna be
yeah you're gonna make it and I'm gonna look at this and say even now I think oh
I got potato stuck in the outside even now I think that that is although that's
a nice little size of I mean half this filling it's a nice little size here's a
tiny little dumpling mm-hmm okay so you well uh you fold it over as best you can
and you pitch it together as best you can and if you you know if you really
want to you can get a fork and just run the tines of the fork you know around
the edge don't have to you make it work piece of dough a little bit of potato
and fold it over the dough is nice and stretchy so you can stretch it and then
you pinch it together and you want to drive out as much air as possible to
from the filling and that's it a pierogi and like we said earlier it's been a
long time since we said slowly it comes back slowly it comes back so some things
we've rediscovered it's easier just to grab it a little bit with your fingers
you know the spoon is a great idea but you're gonna figure it out very quickly
how much you need and the first ones didn't need it because the dough was
still moist enough but as you work through it the dough dries out a little
bit and so dip your finger in a little bit of water running around one side and
then crimp them closed and it'll stick a lot better I also found it helpful if I
shaped the potato shape the potato into the half into like the Halfmoon shape
yeah then I could just fold it over instead of having to flatten it and fold
it so as we work through these so many different fillings you could put
anything you want in them who fruit is always good
I do like for its if you got some frozen frozen fruit might be
- web yeah I would thought and make a like a compote oh yeah not even a
compote maybe even Jam pretty much it della pyjama and you and then you should
put icing sugar on it yep but I think you could have a lot of
fun it like everything you could have a lot of fun with this what have you got
in the house what flavors do you like dumplings are kind of a global thing
everywhere we've gone in the world has a version of a dumpling so make the
flavors that you like right I mean if you have some tex-mex and some ground
beef yeah throw it in we do like our tex-mex it's true yeah um but maybe you
would prefer something more with a look at some meat or with a curry flavor so
I'm mumbling perhaps you prefer something with a curry flavor in it yep
yeah doesn't matter what should you covered man that's at this point it's
it's you know tradition sorry tradition gets thrown at the window you
do what you've got and you know what it's gonna be fantastic no matter what
happens never had this version of a dumpling yeah make them so we're gonna
finish making these and then we'll come back in like two seconds and we'll start
frying them off okay we folded all the pierogies so I'm just gonna cook these
off I like to do it in a little bit of bacon and onion so while the pot of
water comes up to boil saute off this bacon okay just the water
so we ended up with sixty like so close to yeah close to sixty so you're gonna
get fifty to sixty somewhere in there it'll be a little bit different every
time you do it because of the way you fold them so I put some onions in I've
rendered out the bacon with the fat put some onions in and you just pop those
into the boiling water it might be boiling too high let me turn that down a
little bit and you pretty much just boil them until they float and don't crowd
the pot anymore and whatever we don't eat tonight what
does leave on that trace to get in the freezer freeze them individually and
then pop them into a freezer bag makes for a great meal later yeah
hey these are done alright those are done you're good yep so I like to finish
them in the pot with the bacon around them just a little bit you can and also
to get some of that bacon and onion flavor all over the outside all right I
got a little 1 gallon oh here cuz that name seems to fit so
that's a that's from our one gallon brew video and this is the part bottle at the
very end lit like the dregs the bottom of the of the fermenter still looks
fantastic though okay we're going to have first pierogies powder hey boy
there's a lot of different names so many different really there's links once
you've got the dough stuff anything inside that you want and I have to admit
for me the pierogi is almost just a way that it doesn't seem weird that I'm
eating fried bacon and onions with sour cream hmm that's great flavors great
yeah good almost a little thinner but that's
a skill that we don't have so that's the that's the way we made them I mean
that's that's because this is the first time we've made them in Gears okay yeah
like three decades and it's not easy to do right that's something that you know
your grandma knows how to do because she's been doing it for 20 years or
don't worry about do it off - no just don't worry just enjoy it you can have
vegetables on the side you can eat them just play it up straight up mm-hmm
whatever makes you happy yeah you're good I like this inexpensive easy to
make comfort food this recipe doesn't make so many that it's daunting a lot of
recipes are daunting cuz they make so many and um
like for meals yeah for the two of us that you of us that's for me oh so some
will go in the freezer and then you can cook them straight from frozen you don't
need to thaw them out you can pop them right in the water frozen so of course
stay safe stay well I hope everybody's getting by in these tough times and help
your neighbor if your neighbor needs help please help them out
all right thanks for stopping by see you guys soon that's a good beer I like that
yes you just had to say something didn't you chicken I was gonna sit here and eat
this done
you