How to Make Pelemeni- Russian Dumpling Recipe

If you would ask me what my favorite food was when I was ten, I would undoubtedly say pelemeni. If you ask me now what my favorite Russian food is, I’ll still say pelemeni! What are pelemeni? They’re Russian meat dumplings that are served with a delicious broth and topped with sour cream and dill. While they do take a bit of time to make, pelemeni is a wonderful food to come together and make with friends, since it doubles as quality time and meal prepping.

Some of my fondest memories involve my sisters and mama sitting around the kitchen table, making many batches of pelemeni for the freezer. Sometimes, one sister would read aloud a Russian book as entertainment for all of us or my mama would reminisce stories from her childhood, and other times we would just sing songs all together.

What You’ll Need

• Stand mixer
• baking sheets
• pelemeni maker(optional)
• rolling pin

We usually make pelemeni by hand, but if you are planning to make these by yourself, I would recommend getting yourself this pelemeni maker. It only costs about $10 and it will save you hours. If you do opt to use your pelemeni maker, then disregard my instructions of how to form them by hand and read the pelemeni maker instructions.

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Ingredients

For the meat filling:

• 1 grated onion
• 3 lbs ground beef
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 tbsp salt
• 1 tsp pepper
• a dash of garlic powder

For the dough(2X):

• 4 cups flour
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 cup boiling water

This recipe will yield two large baking sheets full of pelemeni, which is about 175-200 pelemeni. But obviously, this all depends on how big or small you make them. I needed to make two batches of dough to finish up all of the meat filling.

If you end up having more meat leftover, I like to just roll them up into meatballs and freeze it for a later day. If you have leftover dough, you can repurpose it into something else. I like to put it into a Russian soup that we make, called суп с галушками.

Instructions

First, mix up all of the filling ingredients, as shown above. If you have a meat grinder, the meat filling tastes juicier if you swap one of the pounds of beef with chicken. Put the chicken breasts or thighs through the grinder and don’t worry about adding the 1/2 cup water into the meat filling. If you don’t have one, like me, just ground beef tastes great too! 🙂

Feel free to add in other fillings too! Some like to add vegetables into the meat, such as carrots, potatoes, or zucchinis. Our recipe is just the basic pelemeni, but you can tweak it as you like!

The reason we use boiling water is to make the dough softer and easier to work with. If you don’t have a stand mixer and knead the dough by hand, you can use room temperature water.

Allow the dough to rest for 5 minutes before starting on forming the pelemeni.

How to Form the Pelemeni

1. First, cut a section from the dough and make it into a snake form.
2. Next, cut up the “snake” into little cirlces.
3. Dip the cut sections into flour.
4. Using a rolling pin, roll out the dough pieces into little circles.
5. Place about a spoon of the meat filling in the middle of the dough circle.
6. Fold in half and seal the edges.
7. Finally, connect the two ends and place on baking sheet.

Once you fill up a baking sheet, stick it into the freezer. Once solidified, place the pelemeni into ziploc freezer bags. If you want to eat the pelemeni right away, then set some water to boil on the stovetop. Once it boils, add the pelemeni and wait for it to boil once again. Once boiling again, set a timer for seven minutes. Be sure to salt the water and season with your favorite spices.

Serve the pelemeni with a dollop of Daisy and some fresh dill. We like to eat it with the bouillon, but you can also just eat the dumplings! Enjoy!