Since marrying Mary a couple years ago, I’ve learned there’s more to Polish cooking than I knew. One of our favorite Polish meals, something she grew up with that I’d never heard of, is a simple meal of pierogies and sausage. We served this to 100 guests when we finally had our wedding reception in June 2005 and folks really enjoyed it. I made it for dinner last night, and it’s such a good comfort food that … well, I haven’t slept that well in a while!
Here’s how simple it is …
Head over to Kroger’s frozen foods section. There, you’ll find at least one brand of pierogies, Mrs. T’s. In larger stores you’ll also find Kasia’s, which is what we had last night. There are various flavors, but for good variety get two boxes of different kinds, which in our case were potato & onion and sweet cheese. Also, make sure you get about 2 lbs Polish sausage (fresh is better, but precooked or even smoked is fine), an onion, a stick of unsalted butter and some olive oil. When you get home, let the pierogies thaw before cooking them.
Put a nice big skillet over low-medium heat and melt one stick of the butter in the skillet. While it’s melting, skin the onion, cut it in half, then into 1/4″ slices. Drop this into the melted butter and sauté the onions for a few minutes. Then, drop the pierogies into the same skillet and put a cover on it.
Heat another pan over medium heat and add a couple tablespoons olive oil. Slice the sausages into 1/4″ slices and add them to this second skillet.
Let the pierogies and sausages cook very slowly, stirring occasionally while also making sure to turn each pierogy so they cook evenly. If the sausage gets too dark (especially the pre-cooked ones), don’t worry. They’re not burning, they’re caramelizing. There’s a huge difference in flavor in these two terms. If it makes you feel better about how the sausage is turning out, go ahead and add a little bit more olive oil, just a tablespoon or two.
Once the pierogies are browned and slightly crisp, serve 6 – 8 on each plate with a pile of sausage slices.
A great variation, which is what we had at the reception, is to boil the sausage in a couple bottles of a nice stout beer. A good choice is Dortmunder Gold from Great Lakes Brewing. Before slicing, boil the sausage until there’s only about 1/4″ of the two bottles of beer left in the skillet. Chef Tad at the Frog Leg Inn in Erie has told us to make sure to boil this uncovered. It makes a difference in when it comes to both the flavor and the firmness of the sausage.
We used to have meals like this when I was a kid. Still do sometimes. We also had kishka which was way too strong for my young taste buds. So… I can’t remember how my Mom prepared it. I bought some a while back and even Kowalski Meat ( I was connected to the old Polish foreman on the sausage stuffing line!) couldn’t help me at that time. Any ideas?
I asked Mary and she has no idea. But I do know a good source of such info. She has a 1972 copy of ‘Treasured Polish Christmas Customs and Traditions’ from the Polanie Publishing Company. Their website is at http://polanie.org and they still offer this book. But if you look at their Books page, the first item is ‘Treasured Polish Recipes for Americans’, which has 475 Polish recipes in it. Their Christmas book is so nice (it also has a few recipes) that, if I were looking for a traditional Polish dish, I’d get their cookbook.
Thanks for the lead. It sounds like a book that should be in our collection.