Name: Pumpkin Cheddar Pierogies
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 15 min
Total time: 1 h 45 min
Yield: 12
Cuisine: Eurpoean
Ingredients: 16 ounces sour cream; 1/4 cup half and half; 1 tablespoon butter; 1 teaspoon salt; 3 to 4 cups all-purpose flour; 2 cups fresh pumpkin puree; 1 1/2 cups seriously sharp Cabot Cheddar; 1 teaspoon garlic salt; 1 teaspoon rubbed sage; 1/2 teaspoon black pepper; 20 ounces fresh, bratwurst sausage

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These Pumpkin Cheddar Pierogies are tender homemade dumplings are filled with freshly roasted pumpkin and seriously sharp Cabot cheese. The slightly sweet pumpkin is the perfect pair with sharp cheddar cheese.

This post is sponsored by Cabot Cooperative as part of #PumpkinWeek. All opinions are my own.

I love piergies. Who doesn’t, right? That delicious dough surrounding potato and cheese filling that’s boiled then sautéed. Sometimes with onions and sometimes with cabbage. They’re ingrained in Eastern and Central European cuisine. And they’re ingrained in my family history, too.

I shared the recipe for Mom’s homemade perogies. And yes, that’s how we spelled them. It’s a simple dough with flour, sour cream, butter, and cream. Our family history isn’t really Central or Eastern European. So, I’m not really sure how these came to be a family recipe. I do know that where Mom grew up was a mecca of lots of different cultures and cuisines. Maybe that’s how? I’ll have to ask her some day.

Though, now that I read the history of the pierogi, it might be from that one place way up north of Norway that’s on the Russian border. That’s where some of my ancestors came from. Maybe that’s where the pierogi recipe comes from. I mean, the story goes that we have needlepoint that Anastasia made herself. So, who knows?

Just like me, no one is really sure where pierogies came from. Some say that Marco Polo brought them from China to Poland via Italy during his expeditions. There’s a lot of myths surrounding a Saint Hyacinth feeding mass populations with pierogi during a famine, the invasion of the Tatars, or just because. No matter how they got there, pierogi have been imbedded in Central and Eastern European cuisine for centuries.

To say the combinations, ingredients, and methods vary widely is an understatement!

Poland is probably known for it’s pierogi. From serving them at Christmas and Easter to weddings and wakes, the pierogi is definitely part of Polish culture. They’re filled with potatoes, onions, cheese, meats, and sometimes even fruits.

Ukrainians have them as a staple of their every day diet. They also have special Christmas Eve and other traditional celebrations, but not as much as Poland I don’t think. They use more fermented milk products for their pierogies, similar to the yogurt in the dough for these pumpkin cheddar pierogies. They even use sweetened cottage cheese as a filling for a dessert pierogi.

Slovakia adds cheese to theirs. Slovenia makes theirs out of buckwheat flour instead of what flour. Russia uses mostly fruits and berries but also potatoes, cabbage, and beef. Hungary fills theirs with jam, cottage cheese for the most part. Romania uses sour cherries, plum jam and sweetened cottage cheese. They also have savory ones filled with dilled cheese mixtures, potatoes and meat. German speaking countries have spinach and quark which is a ricotta style cheese.

There are so many different variations of these potato filled dumplings.

Just like the ones you can typically find today, there’s a wide range of fillings in these iconic dumplings. I’ve seen spinach and feta, potato and cheese, 5 cheese pizza, broccoli Cheddar, jalapeno Cheddar, garlic Parmesan, loaded baked potato, and even sauerkraut ones! I wasn’t kidding when I said there was a bunch of different flavors. And that’s just from one website!

If you make them at home, you can fill them with whatever you want! And this time, I wanted to fill them with fresh pumpkin and sharp Cheddar cheese. Initially I was going to use goat cheese or ricotta, but when Cabot signed on as a sponsor, I knew their seriously sharp Vermont Cheddar cheese was the perfect pair with the slightly sweet, fresh pumpkin.

So, I didn’t have such a great time making these. It has nothing to do with the dough or the filling. It has everything to do with the fact that I pushed myself too hard that day. My knee was killing me by the time I sat down to eat. I was in the kitchen for probably about 5 hours that day? Without stopping frequently to take a load off and rest my knee. That was stupid.

But, when I finally sat down to eat I was completely in love with these pumpkin Cheddar pierogies.

The dough is tender and delicious. It’s rich with the yogurt and butter and cream flavors. Then there’s the slightly sweet pumpkin filling. When you use fresh pumpkin, I believe it’s not as sweet as the pumpkin puree from the can. Granted, I haven’t looked to see if they add sugar to it, but they probably do. Fresh pumpkin is awesome and well worth the little effort it takes to roast and make your own puree.

Besides, you get to roast the seeds if you use fresh pumpkin!

The two little pie pumpkins I purchased made at least 3 cups of delicious puree. It took maybe 10 minutes to slice and scoop out the seeds. Then it’s a matter of popping it into a baking sheet and letting those suckers to roast in the oven. It’s not difficult. Yes, it’s probably more than the cans but the flavor has so much more flavor than the canned puree.

Fresh puree even has a different color!

You can tell from the photos that the pumpkin is way more yellow than the canned stuff. I should have done a side by side comparison shot. I might still do that. There’s plenty of #PumpkinWeek left over to make that happen.

I had planned on making some cabbage to go with these pumpkin Cheddar pierogies, but I was too tired. I popped the sausages in the air fryer and let them cook. That’s my new favorite way to cook sausages; in the air-fryer! It’s super easy, the skin gets really crispy, and it’s hands off the most part. You just need to flip them halfway through. How simple is that?

I loved these. They tasted just like home to me. I can remember helping Mom make a batch of these beauties. We boiled the potatoes, shredded the cheese, and helped cut and press the pierogies. Then we boiled and sautéed with at least onion, but sometimes bacon and cabbage.

Then dipping those delicious dumplings in sour cream! The hubs doesn’t share this with me. He doesn’t like plan sour cream. I can’t get enough of it! I love dipping my pierogies in sour cream, put it on my potatoes, and top my tacos with it. It’s like his version of cilantro for me. If a leaf was accidentally dropped into a VAT of salsa I would know.

Just look at that color in those delicious dumplings. And the pumpkin is perfectly paired with the seriously sharp Vermont Cheddar cheese from Cabot. There’s the rich dumpling dough. Then the slightly sweet squash flavor of the pumpkin. And then the cheese smacks you and you’re like, “WOW! These are awesome pumpkin Cheddar pierogies!”

Yes, you will say this.

And you will say to yourself that you will not miss any recipes for #PumpkinWeek! You’re going to save, pin, share, tweet, then all so you can make them all later. And, don’t forget to enter the giveaway! There’s so many fun prize packages from our sponsors.

12 servings