Traditional Ukrainian Varenyky with Cherries

July 16, 2023

Traditional Ukrainian Varenyky with Cherries

If you randomly ask any Ukrainian kid about their favorite home meal, they would say pelmeni or varenyky, made of a thin dough layer with various fillings inside. And the most delicious type of varenyky is the one with cherry filling we usually cook in summer when there are many fresh cherries at home gardens or on the market. I'd like to show you how to make this fantastic food at home even if you have only frozen cherries available, like in my case here in Sweden.

Ukrainian cherry varenyky served with butter and fresh strawberries

Varenyky are small cooked pieces of dough with a filling inside (like dumplings), made in the shape of a semicircle as big as a tablespoon. Traditional fillings are mashed potatoes with fried onion, cabbage (sour cabbage or stewed one with tomato paste), cottage cheese, and the most exquisite one - cherries.

Pelmeni is also made of the same dough but formed in another shape (the two ends of the semicircle are connected together) with a minced meat filling. I plan to post a pelmeni recipe later.

So let's start with varenyky!

Varenyky with Cherries

Dough

3 cups all-purpose flour (500 g)
1 cup water (250 g)
1 egg
3 tablespoon sunflower oil (60 g)
0.5 teaspoon salt (5 g)

Cherry Filling

700 g cherries
sugar

1 cup=250 ml

The recipe is for 6 servings of varenyky (about 250 g / serving). You can freeze them and cook them whenever you need. For this purpose, prepare the space in your freezer and lay it with parchment. I make it in one container, putting varenyky layer by layer with the parchment in between.

You can use cherries with stones, but it is better to get them out. It takes time, but it's worth it😉 You can buy frozen cherries (as I did this time), but you must defrost them first and drain the juice.

Boil 1 cup of water. Let it cool down for a couple f minutes.
Whisk the flour with salt in a big bowl and add hot water. Mix it with a spoon or spatula (CAUTION: the water is hot!).
Mix the egg with oil in a separate little bowl and add it to the dough. Then knead the dough until it's smooth, wrap it with plastic foil, and let it rest for about half an hour.
There are several techniques to form the varenyky, and I want to show you the one I find the most effective since I've been practicing a lot during the last year. Dust the working surface with flour. Take about 1/3 of the dough and roll it into a thin layer (about 1.5 mm). Take a glass with a diameter from 5 to 7 cm on top. Then cut the circles. Put all the scraps back to the dough into a plastic foil.
Put the cherries on each circle of dough. I had big cherries and small glass, so there was only 1 cherry per varenyk this time. But usually, I have about 2 to 3 cherries in each varenyk. Also, if your cherries are sour, put 1/3 teaspoon of sugar in the center of each dough circle. My cherries were sweet enough, so I didn't add sugar at all.
And start to shape the varenyky. Slightly stretch the circle, put two sides of dough together, and press them to close the filling inside. It is necessary to watch that filling is wholly packed inside so the varenyky won't fall apart while boiling.
Put the varenyky on the parchment sheets to avoid sticking to the surface.
Continue rolling a new portion of dough (with scraps from the previous step) and repeat the process until all the dough and filling are over.
How to cook varenyky. Put the water in the big pot (1.5-2.5 liters) and bring it to a boil. Put varenyky in, gently stir and wait until the water boils again. Then cook for 5 minutes and take them out with a skimmer (special large spoon with holes).
Serve varenyky with butter and sour cream - the classic topping that all Ukrainians love. We even have the idiom "Like varenyk in butter (sour cream)," which is about a rich, lucky person living in luxury.

Bon appetite!🍒

Below are some photos of the process: