Finnish cuisine

Karelian pies

Name: Karelian pies
Prep time: 60 min
Cook time: 25 min
Total time: 85 min
Yield: 8
Cuisine: Finnish cuisine
Ingredients: 250 g Rye flour; 150 ml Water; 150 g Short-grain rice; 700 ml Milk; 100 g Butter; 3 Eggs; to taste Salt

Karjalanpiirakka

A rye shell filled with rice porridge, brushed with butter out of the oven and served with egg butter.

Prep: 60 min
Cook: 25 min
Total: 85 min
Difficulty: Takes practice

Servings

Units

Ingredients

Rye flour250 g
Water150 ml
Short-grain rice150 g
Milk700 ml
Butter100 g
Eggs — hard-boiled3
Saltto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1
Cook the rice in the milk over a low flame for forty minutes, to a slightly loose porridge. Season it and cool it.
45 min
2
Knead a dough from the rye flour, water and salt for five minutes. It comes out firm and not sticky.
7 min
3
Divide it into sixteen balls and roll each into an oval half a millimetre thick. Dust with rye flour rather than wheat.
25 min
4
Spoon porridge into the middle, leaving the edges bare, and crimp them into a frill with the filling left open.
20 min
5
Bake at 250 °C for fifteen minutes — short and very hot, or the thin pastry dries out.
18 min
6
Melt half the butter with an equal amount of hot water and dip the hot pies in it. Cover them with a cloth for ten minutes.
12 min
7
Mash the boiled eggs with the rest of the butter, softened, and salt: this is munavoi, egg butter. Serve it with the pies.
6 min

About the dish

The dough is rye flour, water and salt alone — no fat and no yeast. It is rolled paper-thin: in the finished pie the crust should be barely a frame around the filling.

The porridge has to be noticeably looser than feels right: it firms up in the oven. A stiff filling comes out dry and crumbly.

The hot pies are dipped in melted butter mixed with water straight from the oven. That softens the edges and gives the sheen Karelian pies are recognised by.

Worth knowing

— Roll it very thin — the board should show through the dough. A thick crust turns the pie into a dry rusk.
— Fat-free dough dries within minutes. Keep the unrolled balls under a damp cloth.
— The pies freeze after baking and reheat in the oven. The butter goes on after reheating, not before.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories: 240 kcal
Protein: 6 g
Fat: 10 g
Carbs: 32 g

Useful for this recipe

Oven Temperature Converter