Vareniki

Vareniki are widespread in the home cooking of the southern regions of Russia. Cottage cheese, potato, cabbage, mushrooms, or berries are wrapped in unleavened dough and then boiled. As early as the 19th century, this was a well-known dish with many sweet and savory variants. Vareniki with cherries are served with sour cream and sugar, with potato — often with fried onion, and the cottage cheese filling is made both sweet and salty.

Vareniki are boiled dumplings, usually shaped as half‑moons, with a thin, soft dough wrapper sealing on the edge. Vareniki can be sweet or savory. Sweet are great for breakfast, savory — for lunch. Popular savory fillings include mashed potatoes, fried mushrooms, cabbage, salted pork fat (shkvarki). Sweet versions often use cherries, berries, or sweet cottage cheese (tvorog).

Some of you might have noticed that there is a certain similarity between pelmeni and vareniki. So, what’s the difference? Unlike pelmeni, vareniki filling is always already cooked. As a result, dumplings take less time to cook than pelmeni, as the filling does not require additional preparation.

cooking
time 90 min

difficulty
level Easy-medium

key
ingredients 8

Ingredients

For the dough

Wheat flour

500 g

Water

250 ml

egg

1 pcs

Salt

3 g

For the potato filling

Potatoes

700 g

Onions

200 g

Neutral vegetable oil

3 tablespoons

Butter

25 g

Ground black pepper

to taste

Salt

to taste

Servings: 6

Recipe

Potato and onion savory filling

Wash and peel the potatoes. Cut into pieces, put them in a pot, and cover with cold water.
Bring the water to a boil, add salt, cover with a lid and cook for about 30 minutes over medium heat.

Peel and dice onions into small cubes. Heat a frying pan with vegetable oil and melt the
butter in it. Add the chopped onions to the pan and cook over medium heat, stirring regularly, until the onions are golden brown.

Drain the cooked potatoes, reserving some of the water in
a mug. Mash the potatoes. It should be quite coarse. If necessary, add some of the previously saved water.

Add half of the fried onions with butter to the mashed potatoes, season with freshly ground black pepper and salt to taste, and mix well. Let the filling cool, and reserve the remaining fried onions for serving.

Custard dough

Take a small saucepan or a thick-bottomed skillet, pour in the water, break in an egg, add salt, and mix well. Add about a cup of sifted flour to the liquid.

Use a mixer to blend the mixture until it is smooth, creating a pancake-like batter. Place the pot over medium heat and heat the batter, stirring constantly, until it thickens.

Remove the pot with the hot custard from the heat and let it cool slightly. Sift the remaining flour into a large bowl and add the custard.

Knead the dough in a bowl with your hands until it stops being sticky and becomes soft
and elastic. Wrap the dough in plastic and let it rest for about 30 minutes.

Filling and shaping

On a floured surface, roll out the dough into a layer about 3 mm thick. Cut out circles with a diameter of 5-7 cm: the size of the dumplings depends only on your preferences. Add filling and fold into half-moons. Pinch with a braid-like seal using your fingers.

Boiling and serving

Boil water in a large pot and add salt. Add the desired number of dumplings to the boiling water, bring to a boil, and cook over medium heat for 5 minutes. No rapid boiling! You only need to cook the dough.

Use a slotted spoon to remove the cooked dumplings to a serving dish or immediately
place them on individual plates. Sprinkle with fried onions and drizzle with oil from the pan. Serve immediately.

Hint: If you're making a lot of vareniki at once, you can freeze some of them. Place them in a single layer on a floured board and put them in the freezer. Once they're frozen, transfer them to a plastic bag. Frozen vareniki should be cooked for a couple of minutes longer.

10.

SPECIAL NOTE Sweet cherry vareniki

Custard dough (see above)
Pitted cherries 300 g
Corn starch 20 g
White sugar to taste

Mix berries and its juice with corn starch.
Cook, roll and cut the same custard dough as described earlier.
Add ½ tsp sugar and 2 pitted cherries to each varenik and form a braid.

where
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