Pirukad Recipes

MY PIRUKAD/PIRUKAS STUFFED PASTRIES

Steps:

• 1. I am getting lazy in my old age. It's hard to get good help now days..lol So there are times I use Bridgeford frozen white bread. For every pound of ham you will need 4 hard boiled eggs. DO NOT CUT ALL THE FAT OFF THE HAM TRIMMINGS..it adds moisture to the hard boiled eggs and ham. plus it adds flavor.
• 2. When I bake my ham for the holidays or anytime. I NEVER put any kind of sweetner or cloves on it. It's not the way Europeans make ham. First boil the eggs and set aside to cool. Cut your ham in chucks and place in food processor. Pulse till you have made the ham look like coarse corn meal. Peel the boiled egg and chopped the eggs. Add them to the ham and stir to combine evenly. Set cover and aside in the refrig.
• 3. To make bread dough. Scalded the milk, add the butter and salt. Cool to 120* Desolve yeast in 1/4 cup warm water 120* with the sugar. **Hot tap water has the perfect temp.** Set aside till it foams. Add Yeast to the warm scaled milk, add a cup of flour and stir. Keep adding and stirring until you can't stir anymore flour in. Flour a cutting board or your clean counter. Place the dough on and knead as much flour in until it is just sightly sticky and smooth. Place dough in a greased bowl and turn. Cover let rise in a warm place until double. (I usually use my oven that has a pilot light) Turn out on floured surface and knead again until you hear popping sounds.
• 4. Cut dough in half. Use 1/2 the dough at a time, turn out on a floured surface and roll out to 1/4 inch. Cut with a large round cookie cutter or jelly glass, dipped in flour. Yes I really do have an old Jelly drinking glass from Welchs. Take each round and place a heaping tsp. of ham and egg mix in the center of dough. Fold the dough over, it will look like a half circle. Some may have a crescent shape. Moisten your fingers tips with little water..moisten the edges. Pinch the edges closed. Set aside till you have used all the dough.
• 5. In a 4 quart pan, heat the crisco to 350*. You will need enough crisco melted so it fills the 4 quart pan half full. Carefully with a slotted spoon place as many Pirrukad in the hot oil. Turn them as they brown. When they are brown on both sides they are finished. Left out with a slotted spoon and place on a brown bag or paper towels. Serve hot or cold. They go excellently with pea soup and crowders. My kids use loved it when I would pack them in their lunch pails.
• 6. Notes: These can me bake in a 350* oven. And instead of using crisco you can use oil or lard. If you have any filling left..freeze it.

PIRUKAD

Steps:

• Mix butter, sour cream and egg. Work flour in until it has pizza dough consistency. Let stand overnight. Cook onions in butter until browned. Add ground beef, oxo, salt, pepper & garlic etc. until browned. Put in bowel. Add chopped up hard boiled egg to beef mixture. Bake 375 approx 15 - 20 min. For cabbage just substatute

EASY PIROSHKI

Steps:

• 1. Begin cooking ground beef in skillet. As soon as the beef has begun to firm up, add the onion and saute until beef is nicely browned (add a tablespoon or 2 of butter if beef is too dry). Remove from heat and set aside. Rest pan tilted at an angle to allow excess grease to pool.
• 2. Prepare a place to roll out the crescent roll dough by sprinkling a little flour on a large flat surface. Open the tube and carefully unroll one of the dough bundles. Flatten it on the floured surface and push the perforated areas together to make one large slab of dough. Roll dough with rolling pin to even out the surface. Dough should become somewhat wider as you do so. Cut dough into 8 or 10 evenly sized squares (I used a pizza cutter).
• 3. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
• 4. Pour off excess grease from meat mixture, then add seasoning salt, garlic powder, and sour cream. Mix well, taste and adjust seasonings. Using one half of mixture, place equal portions of filling on each square of dough; try to use up all this half of filling in this half of dough (eat whatever won't fit!). Then fold over one corner of each square to make triangle-shaped pockets, pressing the edges to seal (if you have trouble getting seal to form, take a corner of paper towel and dry the edges, then press together again). Place piroshki on a cookie sheet and repeat process with second roll of crescent dough and second half of filling.
• 5. Once all piroshki have been sealed, cut a small slit or poke holes with fork in top of each pocket. Mix egg yolk with 2 tbs water and brush wash onto tops of pastries. Bake in preheated oven for 10 - 12 minutes until golden brown.
• 6. Variation: Another piroshki recipe I have uses mushrooms and and onion sauteed in butter as a filling--don't forget to include the sour cream and seasonings. Although...in virtually all of the several fillings given for this other recipe, dill is an ingredient, so you could substitute dill weed for the seasoning salt and add a bit of salt to compensate. Additionally, hard boiled egg is also included in nearly every filling variant; shredded cabbage is also a common ingredient (cooked first to soften, of course). Experiment; enjoy!
• 7. *(Continued from Personal Notes above--that area is never big enough for me!) Wikipedia has a thorough discussion of pierogi and a lesser entry for piroshki, specifying the two are distinct foods from each other (pierogi being more dumpling-like than piroshki). It indicates that "pirog" is a full sized pirozhok (singular of piroshki) and that "pirogi" is the plural of pirog. However, for purposes of cooking, it says pirogi/piroshki is a different dish from pierogi. Confused yet? Me, too. In the real world, no one makes that distinction so I have included both words (as well as several other alternative spellings) in the Key Words section. (To honor copyright law, I am using my own words to describe how I prepared this dish in my home kitchen.)

PIRUKAD

Steps:

• Mix all dough ingredients well and knead it with hand, then put in refrigerator 1 hour
• fry chopped onion in butter make cubes of boiled egg
• combine fried onion, meat egg salt/pepper
• sprinkle flour over counter and roll out dough evenly into a thin layer rectangle
• along one edge place teaspoons of filling 4 inches from edge and 4 inches apart
• cut out semi circles of filled dough with the edge of a cutter, pinch open edges tightly together
• brush top and edges with lightly beaten egg
• bake 350 F until lightly brown about 15 min