Pelmeni

Ingredients

• Flour600 g
• Eggs2
• Iced water220 ml
• Beef400 g
• Pork — fatty400 g
• Onions2
• Crushed ice50 g
• Bay leaf2
• Butter60 g
• Soured cream — to serve200 ml
• Vinegar — to serve30 ml
• Salt and pepperto 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. 1

   Knead a stiff dough from the flour, eggs, iced water and salt and work it fifteen minutes.

   18 min

2. 2

   Wrap it in film and refrigerate it forty minutes.

   45 min

3. 3

   Chop the meat by hand or put it through a coarse plate, and mix it with the grated onion, salt and pepper.

   20 min

4. 4

   Work the crushed ice into the filling and chill it twenty minutes.

   22 min

5. 5

   Roll the dough a millimetre thick and cut six-centimetre rounds.

   20 min

6. 6

   Put a teaspoon of filling on each round, fold it into a half-moon, seal it and join the ends into a ring.

   45 min

7. 7

   Boil them in salted broth with bay for four minutes after they surface, and serve with butter and soured cream.

   12 min

About the dish

Iced water or crushed ice goes into the filling — about fifty grams to a kilo. It turns to steam as they cook and broth collects inside each dumpling.

Three meats go in: beef for flavour, pork for fat, a little lamb for aroma. That is the Urals canon, though households usually manage with two.

They are shaped in the cold and kept frozen. Pelmeni began as a way of storing food: made in autumn, they sat in sacks all winter and were boiled as needed.

Worth knowing

• — Keep the dough under film throughout the shaping. Dried rounds will not seal and the pelmeni open in the pot.
• — Boil them in batches in plenty of water. In a crowded pot they stick together and the broth goes gluey with starch.
• — Freeze the shaped pelmeni on a board in one layer before bagging them. Bagged straight away they freeze into one lump.

Nutrition

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

Calories

680 kcal

Protein

34 g

Fat

32 g

Carbs

62 g

More from Russia

• Borscht — A beetroot soup on beef stock where acid holds both the colour and the flavour. The beetroot is braised separately, never boiled in the pot.
• Syrniki — Curd cheese fritters with as much curd as possible and exactly enough flour to keep them together.
• Meat solyanka — A soup on strong stock with several meats, brined cucumbers, olives and lemon.