POTATO AND WHITE BEAN PIEROGIES WITH CHEATER SAUERKRAUT

yields 24 PIEROGIES, ENOUGH FOR 4 TO 6 PEOPLE AS A SIDE OR 10 TO 12 AS PART OF A SPREAD

ingredients

• 2 1/2 cup all-purpose flour, plus more for kneading
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp garlic powder
• 1 1/2 to 2 cup warm water
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 1 LB red or yellow potatoes (about 4 fist-size potatoes)
• 2 tsp olive oil
• 1/2 large yellow onion
• 3 cup spinach
• Salt

yields 24 PIEROGIES, ENOUGH FOR 4 TO 6 PEOPLE AS A SIDE OR 10 TO 12 AS PART OF A SPREAD

ingredients

• 2 1/2 cup all-purpose flour, plus more for kneading
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp garlic powder
• 1 1/2 to 2 cup warm water
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 1 LB red or yellow potatoes (about 4 fist-size potatoes)
• 2 tsp olive oil
• 1/2 large yellow onion
• 3 cup spinach
• Salt

3 Make the filling: Chop the potatoes up into chunks no bigger than a poker chip. It’s cool to leave the skin on if you’re all about the fiber life. Place a steamer insert and a couple inches of water in a medium pot. Add the potatoes, cover, heat that over medium-low heat, and steam those tubers until you can stick a fork through with no problem, 15 to 20 minutes.

4 While the potatoes are getting soft, grab a skillet and heat up the oil over medium heat. Add the onion and sauté that until it starts to brown, about 5 minutes. Add the spinach, a pinch of salt, and keep cooking until the spinach is all wilted down, about 2 minutes longer. Remove from the heat and leave that there.

5 Grab a large bowl and dump the beans in. Using a potato masher or a big-ass spoon, mash those mother ers up until a smoothish paste is formed. By now the potatoes should be down, so dump those spuds in and keep smashing until it kinda looks like mashed potatoes. Add the onion-spinach mixture, the garlic, lemon juice, hot sauce, and nutritional yeast and mix it up until it’s all combined. Taste that starchy savior and add more garlic, lemon juice, hot sauce, or salt depending on whatthe you think is missing.

6 Fill a large pot with water and bring that to a boil over medium-high heat while you assemble the pierogies.

7 Flour the counter where you kneaded the dough again and grab half of the rested dough. Roll that out nice and thin, about the thickness of a tortilla. Grab a biscuit cutter or jar with a mouth at least 2.5 inches wide and cut out some rounds for your pierogies. Ball up any scraps and reroll them. We usually get about 12 rounds for each half of dough. Grab the other half of the dough and repeat that .

8 To stuff the pierogies, grab a small glass of water and use your finger to wet the edges of each dough round. Add about 1 TBL of filling to each round and then fold that over. Seal the edges down with your finger and then crimp that with a fork so it looks kinda like a pie crust along the edges. Put them all on a floured baking sheet until you’re all done and ready to boil them.

9 To cook, drop them down in the boiling water in batches no larger than 6 at a time so those ers don’t all stick together. Boil them until they all start to float and the dough is cooked through, about 5 minutes. Fish them out with a slotted spoon, throw them on a plate, and keep boiling all the remaining pierogies.

10 Once the pierogies are all done, serve with a side of the sauerkraut and maybe some sour cream. Dig in and enjoy.

Modifications

You can try whole wheat pastry flour, but this is one of those times that all-purpose really just works best. It’s the truth.

One 15-ounce can of beans, drained and rinsed, will do if you want to save yourself some extra work. You’ve earned that much, if you ask us.

• recipe