Potato Piroshki

These piroshki are for true potato lovers who want to venture beyond baked and mashed. The potatoes are minimally seasoned, so make sure you use really good fresh russet potatoes. Don’t be intimidated by having to use yeast, and no need to wait for hours while the dough is rising. This one only needs just 40 minutes total. And the piroshki dough is cooperative when trying to close the pouch with a mound of the potato filling inside; it stretches with ease just where you need that nice elasticity—nobody likes dough with behavioral problems. I baked my piroshki, so I was able to cook all six at once. They were simple tasting, but yet very satisfying. And that little bit of dill was so buttery. We ate the leftover piroshki at room temperature, and they were just as enjoyable. In fact, I was able to taste the potato flavor better than when the piroshki was piping hot.

These piroshki have a very nice taste, but one needs to use care when assembling. You might need to widen the dough just a bit more to make it easier to fill. It’s pliable enough to handle the stretch. I had to know the difference between fried and baked piroshki, so I made both. The fried crust has a crispy exterior and is somewhat chewy with a light, almost sweet balance of flavour in the filling. The baked version has a smoother exterior with little less chewy dough, but the dill flavour is nicely emphasized; somewhat more than the fried version. These piroshki are quite tasty warm or at room temperature. Overall, I feel the fried version presents and tastes better, but more work is involved.

This bakery favorite has now become a personal favorite of mine. I’m partial to root vegetables anyway, but I especially enjoy eating potatoes. What I relish most about these piroshki is the filling itself. It is simply divine. The fresh dill and caramelized onions give the mashed potatoes such a sweet and earthy tone. These flavors are what truly make this fried bread so enjoyable to eat. You can eat the piroshki hot or cold. Either way, I’m sure you’ll have people asking you for more.

This piroshki recipe was easy to make and produced a wonderful comfort food that was both tasty and satisfying. I’ll definitely make these again, especially when the weather gets cooler.

These peroshki were wonderful! The filling itself was so much tastier than I expected from the simple ingredient list; after my first taste it was difficult to stop stealing forkfuls from the bowl as I worked. (I can’t say that I noticed any textural advantage to steaming the potatoes, though.) The piroshki dough came together quickly and was easy to work with, and although it was initially so soft that I had to sprinkle on flour every minute or so of kneading it never got tough. My only quibble with the directions is that getting one sixth of the filling to perch atop a six by two inch strip of dough while leaving a border around the edge is a bit ambitious. I used a slightly wider rectangle and sealed and shaped the piroshki without any tears. The results were lovely and uniformly shaped. I opted for frying mine, and the piroshki weren’t at all greasy and had perfectly cooked, tender pastry. The piroshki were huge—I would make this into eight or even ten next time—but we found that they made excellent lunches and, when halved, a worthy part of a big weekend breakfast.