Why do old women around these parts protect their potato pierogie recipes as if they were Coca-Cola’s secret formula? Apparently church ladies of the Lehigh Valley and Pocono regions of Pennsylvania have joined some Masonic-type
Secret Order of the Pierogie … but I can’t prove it.
These women only pass on their recipes to daughters or grand-daughters who are deemed worthy, promise to name their first born female offspring in their honor, and provide for them in old age. And these progeny also follow the tradition, taking some vow to never pass on the recipe to anyone other than a direct female descendant of a bloodline to some mysterious matriarch that must have been the eastern European cousin of Mary Magdalene. My wife’s grandmother deemed her oldest daughter (my wife’s mother) unworthy of receiving the secret family recipe and instead passed it on to my wife’s aunt. But since the aunt only had two sons the family recipe is destined to go the way of the dinosaur. The wife tried getting the recipe from her aunt but she only provided a vague recipe description with “add to taste” purposely listed numerous times. “Add to taste” is bull$hit! Necessary to the ingredients are the type of flour, potato and cheese. Its got to be the right kind of proper aged cheese from certain sources who keeps it under lock and key in the back of their markets, and only turn it over to babas knowing the secret password. The wife tried the recipe a couple of times but has admitted defeat in her goal to achieve the family pierogi. There are recipes on the internet the wife has tried but they produce a Yugo instead of a Maserati. When I was a student at Catholic school my mother joined the church lady group who made and sold pierogie for fundraising events. But since she was from Ireland she was deemed not having the correct genetic lineage and relegated to only peeling of the potato and stuffing and folding the final product… not allowed to learn the secret recipe.
One needs to go to family functions to get their hands on the doughy nirvana slaughtered in onions and butter. But these functions are months away… waiting for warmer weather. You can get a decent pierogie from some local restaurants (who must buy them from old church ladies who don trench coats) but unfortunately I think they have been stored for several days and maybe even (((gasp))) frozen before preparation… Just not the same as fresh homemade.
Last week I read in a local newspaper a columnist’s fools errand asking for people to submit their family recipes in exchange for notoriety. I doubt even in the age of social media women would really pass on the ‘true’ family recipe for a bit of instant gratification.
ISO: Your pierogie recipes
Several years ago their crack team of journalists went in search of the perfect pierogie in the area and wrote this of the winner:
The pierogie recipe at St. John the Baptist Ukrainian Church is top-secret, locked away in the church safe.
Volunteer Susan Perdick won't even share what kind of cheese goes into them.
"In fact, a lot of our workers don't know the recipe," Perdick said.
One special quality does slip out over the course of the taste-test --
finely grated onions are cooked in the pierogis themselves.
But for any other details, we judges are left to trust our own taste buds.
And, by the way, sauerkraut is a pierogie abomination!
Okay, rant over… sign me
Jonzin’ For Fresh Homemade Pierogie.
Hey, it's common knowledge beings travel across galaxies to get a good pierogie…