Vareniki... If you've ever had the happinesstry this amazing dish, then you can count yourself among the initiates. Initiated into the secrets of simple and tasty food, as well as into the mystery of the multinationality of some dishes. By the way, this phenomenon still cannot be clearly explained by either culinary historians, ethnologists or sociologists. Why are vareniki present in one form or another in almost all cuisines of the world? What makes people of different continents and cultures preserve these recipes unchanged for thousands of years? Why, regardless of the filling hidden inside a piece of boiled dough, no one will ever confuse vareniki with any other dish? By the way, about the filling... The fillings for vareniki can be so different, and their number is so great that one could write a real scientific treatise on this topic. After all, there are as many peoples, as many localities, as many traditions, as many filling options for this truly national dish. Vareniki are made sweet and salty, spicy and sour, bland and spicy. And they are served... They are served with so many things: with sour cream and curdled milk, with sugar syrup and honey, with mustard and ketchup, with mayonnaise and jam. In short, you can't list all the fillings. But we will definitely find out the most traditional and most interesting ones. So, let's begin.
Cottage cheese stuffing
One of the most traditional fillings forvareniki. This filling is especially popular among the Eastern and Western Slavs. Vareniki with cottage cheese can be salty or sweet, they can be filled only with cottage cheese or include additional ingredients. The main component of such a filling is cottage cheese. It is best to cook them with granular homemade high-fat cottage cheese. The cottage cheese is simply mixed with an egg or egg yolk, sugar and salt are added to taste, and then the vareniki are filled with it. If the cottage cheese is dry and low-fat, then you can add a little butter or a spoon or two of very thick sour cream to the filling. Raisins, dried apricots, pieces of canned or fresh fruit and berries are added to the sweet curd filling for vareniki - whatever you like. And vareniki with a sweet cottage cheese filling are served with sour cream, yogurt, honey, liquid jam (very tasty - with cherry and raspberry). You can simply pour melted butter over them and sprinkle with sugar. The salty cottage cheese filling is prepared in the same way as the sweet one. The exception is sugar. However, some cooks advise adding a little bit of sugar to this filling to enhance the taste. Very often, the salty cottage cheese filling for vareniki is supplemented with fresh herbs (parsley, dill, basil). Some lovers put garlic, mustard or hot pepper in the cottage cheese. It is advisable to serve vareniki with salted cottage cheese with sour cream or butter.
Potato filling
The second most popular filling ingredient fortraditional vareniki – potatoes. Potato filling is prepared from boiled or raw root vegetables. If you are going to make classic vareniki with potatoes, then you need to boil the potatoes, first peeling and cutting them into several pieces (like for mashed potatoes). Then take the potatoes out of the water and mash them while still hot. Add salt, butter or milk (hot), and stuff the vareniki with the resulting puree. It is believed that the most delicious filling is obtained from mashed potatoes, to which fried onions are added. Vareniki with raw potatoes are much easier to make. Just peel a couple of potatoes and grate them or chop them in a blender. Then add salt and leave for two or three minutes: the potatoes will give juice. Drain the juice, squeeze the potatoes and season them with pepper. Then add softened butter to the filling and rub it with grated potatoes, forming a dense viscous mass. After that, spread the filling on the prepared circles of dough and make vareniki. Potato filling can be made more complex in composition, adding, for example, grated cheese, boiled liver twisted through a meat grinder and even cottage cheese. Green onions, garlic, mushrooms, bacon or cracklings are also added to such filling.
Berry filling
The filling for vareniki can be absolutely anythingany berries. In Russia, the most famous and popular for this purpose is cherries. Moreover, the filling is made both with pitted cherries and with the beans left in the berries (some people like to spit them out during the meal). But in addition to cherries, any seasonal berry is used in the filling for vareniki: strawberries, raspberries, currants, gooseberries, blackberries, lingonberries. Usually, the berries are not prepared for the filling in any way - they are only washed. Fresh berries are placed on the dough, sugar is added and the edges of the vareniki are pinched. If the filling is made from pitted cherries, then the beans are taken out in advance, excess juice is allowed to drain, and only then the cherries are placed in the dough. Some housewives do it differently. They wash the berries, sprinkle them with sugar and leave for a couple of hours. The juice that comes out of the berries is drained, shaped and boiled into dumplings, and served with this juice poured over them and sprinkled with sugar. Fresh homemade sour cream and butter go well with the berry filling. By the way, these dumplings are good both hot and cold.
Meat filling
Yes, yes, they make dumplings with meat too!You may argue that in this case you will get not vareniki, but pelmeni. But, no way! Firstly, pelmeni are made with raw minced meat, and boiled meat is put into vareniki, and secondly, the shape of vareniki also speaks for itself. So, to prepare the meat filling for vareniki, take any boiled meat (or even better - several types) and grind it into minced meat. Separately fry the onion in vegetable or butter and add it to the minced meat. Pepper and salt the filling at your discretion, and then make vareniki from this filling. You can add not only fried onions to the meat filling for vareniki, but also mushrooms, the same potatoes or cheese. You can take raw minced meat for the filling and fry it together with onions. You can mix the minced meat with rice or buckwheat. You can season it with herbs or garlic.
Other fillings
In fact, vareniki are soare versatile, so you can cook them with anything. Dumplings are made with stewed or fried cabbage, adding onion, salt and black pepper to it (during frying). Dumplings are made with a filling of hard-boiled eggs with green or fried onions or even rice. Dumplings are stuffed with carrots fried in vegetable oil. Dumplings can be filled with fresh apples, rice with raisins and dried apricots, cheese with onions. Dumplings can also be made with raw, boiled or salted fish. Cabbage, potatoes or rice can be added to this filling. Lard cracklings, boiled beans with mushrooms, steamed poppy seeds are all suitable for dumpling filling. In general, use anything you like, anything you can use to make pies (pies) or pancakes for the filling. And may you enjoy not only the food, but also its preparation. Bon appetit and success in the culinary field! We recommend reading:
