A bit of history

Vareni­ki is a favorite dish of Slav­ic cui­sine, which the old­er gen­er­a­tion cer­tain­ly asso­ciates with tra­di­tion­al cui­sine, vaca­tions at grand­ma’s and the best home­made food. From Siberia to Ukraine, dumplings are very pop­u­lar to this day. Let’s find out what attracts gourmets in this dish and what is its secret of endur­ing suc­cess.

Cur­rent­ly, researchers attribute dumplings to the nation­al cuisines of Rus­sia and Ukraine. They are boiled dumplings made from unleav­ened dough, which are filled with cot­tage cheese, veg­eta­bles, and all kinds of fruits. Close “rel­a­tives” of this dish are also the famous dumplings, man­ti and ears, as well as sor­cer­ers. In their appear­ance and cook­ing tech­nol­o­gy, dumplings are also sim­i­lar to the Ital­ian dish of unleav­ened dough ravi­o­li and boiled veal.

It seems to many that cook­ing dumplings on their own is long and risky, but if you fol­low the rules, then the dish will def­i­nite­ly turn out to be cooked quick­ly and eas­i­ly.

Stuffing for dumplings

Inter­est­ing­ly, even the dough can con­sist of mashed pota­toes or instead of water, it uses pota­to broth. Most often, in such dish­es you need a very sim­ple fill­ing. Then the taste of dumplings will be with a del­i­cate shade of mashed pota­toes. It looks very orig­i­nal. And such a treat can even be put on the fes­tive table.

Stewed cab­bage and boiled pota­toes are among the most pop­u­lar prod­ucts for stuff­ing dumplings; cher­ries, blue­ber­ries and straw­ber­ries are wide­ly used among sweet fill­ings. You can cook dumplings by steam­ing or in boil­ing water, meat dumplings after cook­ing can be fried until gold­en brown in a pan. Dumplings are served hot, with sour cream or milk.

In order not to con­fuse dumplings with dif­fer­ent fill­ings in the freez­er (and not to cook “cher­ry” and “mush­room” dumplings in the same pan), they choose dif­fer­ent shapes and mod­el­ing meth­ods for them.

Classic filling for cottage cheese dumplings

This old recipe for stuff­ing for dumplings is famil­iar to our grand­moth­ers.

Com­po­si­tion of ingre­di­ents:

• cot­tage cheese (fine-grained) — half a kilo­gram;
• but­ter (50 g);
• gran­u­lat­ed sug­ar — 100 g;
• two yolks (chick­en);
• raisins — 30 g (to taste);
• milk or cream — two tbsp. spoons;
• whipped pro­teins — 2;
• vanil­la.

Cook­ing method:

Soft cot­tage cheese must be rubbed through a sieve and put in a bowl.

Sep­a­rate the yolks from the pro­teins and grind with sug­ar.

Mix every­thing, add vanil­la and raisins.

At the end of the prepa­ra­tion of the fill­ing, add whipped egg whites.

A simple and quick recipe for lazy dumplings with potatoes

Vareni­ki with pota­toes are pre­pared from inex­pen­sive prod­ucts and are suit­able as a lunch.

Ingre­di­ents:

• pota­toes — 6 pcs.;
• flour — 600 g;
• min­er­al water — 250 ml;
• salt — a pinch;
• onion — 1 pc.;
• lard — 1–2 pieces.

You need to start by prepar­ing the fill­ing, which should cool slight­ly by the time the dough is cooked. To do this, you need to peel the pota­toes, pour water, boil as mashed pota­toes. After the pota­toes are crushed with a push­er, sea­soned with oil.

While our pota­toes are cool­ing, the dough is being pre­pared, rolled out, divid­ed into small cir­cles and filled with stuff­ing. Dumplings are boiled in salt­ed boil­ing water (until they float), laid out in a deep con­tain­er. You can add crack­lings, fried onions, sour cream and herbs to them to taste.

Preparing dough for dumplings

For the prepa­ra­tion of dumplings, wheat flour is used, on which lean, yeast dough is knead­ed, some­times with the addi­tion of kefir. The dough for dumplings is rolled out in a very thin lay­er, after which small por­tions of the dish are cut into round, square or oblique shapes. Skilled craftswomen have their own secrets of rolling stuffed dumplings.

Quick dough recipe

In this recipe, the dough is made for about 20 min­utes, and does not require addi­tion­al actions in the form of heat­ing or pro­longed infu­sion, while it turns out to be elas­tic and does not tear when cooked.

Ingre­di­ents:

• Wheat flour (2 cups)
• Chick­en egg (1 pc.)
• Milk (1/3 cup)
• Cold water (1/3 cup)
• Salt (1 tea­spoon)
• Veg­etable oil (1.5 table­spoons)

You need to mix milk, egg, water and salt. Then add flour, mix thor­ough­ly, grad­u­al­ly adding veg­etable oil.

The knead­ing time is at least 15 min­utes. After that, it can be cov­ered with a tow­el and put in a cool place, for about 10 min­utes. We look to see if the pota­toes are cooked, if pota­to dumplings are sup­posed, and top it in mashed pota­toes.

Also, for greater taste and aro­ma, you can add gar­lic, herbs, or chopped fried mush­rooms to the puree. Once the fill­ing is ready, you can start rolling out the dough. Dur­ing rolling, it can be sprin­kled with flour, this will facil­i­tate glu­ing the edges on the dumplings.