“NO! SILENCE, YOU FOOLS! YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’VE TAMPERED WITH!” I scream, my voice being drowned out by rising nether-shrieks as we’re bodily pulled into Etymological Hell, thumping onto rocky, dark red stone as we fall from the mystic hellholes that sucked us in.

“Great. Just fucking great,” I say, brushing red dirt off my pants. “This shit better not get on my socks. I had to throw AWAY socks that were stained by red Australian dirt, and Hell-Dirt HAS to stain worse. And if we get attacked by Verb-wolves, we’ll be eviscerated, mangled, mauled, and otherwise FUCKING VERBED.”

Looks like “sacrificed” is one of the verbs on the table.

Alright, you asked about fucking Pierogi. Implicitly, at least. How are Pelmeni different than Pierogi? Well, while we’re stuck here, we may as well dig into that, as well as Piroshky, And…oh, look, I found ANOTHER ONE, Pampuchy. If we’re going through Hell, just keep going, as they say.  

A Mix of Meaty Mounds

I’m not going to lie to you, dear readers. This whole business is a mess. I don’t read Cyrillic, which would probably help me a LOT in working out who did what first, but here we are. I’m also going to be speaking in the terms I’ve personally encountered and understand to be correct. They may not reflect the stories you’ve been told, but that’s what I’ve got. What I’m saying is, if I piss off Russia with this, I want them to understand the correct way to fix it is a politely worded letter or email, not radiation poisoning.

“You failed to protect yourself from being personally hunted, Comrade O’Guin…”
Do you guys still use “Comrade”? That feels weird.

The first and most important thing to note is that, in ALL of these cases, the I. Or Y. Whichever. In case I haven’t covered it, that’s the pluralization for those objects. Is the constant rule? I don’t know, I’m dealing with like, at least 4 languages here, between modern languages and previous ones. So pierogi means “multiple pierog”, pelmeni “several pelmen”, etc.

SO, let’s talk about the sucker that started this mess, Pelmeni. Pelmeni ARE Russian dumplings, created either somewhere in Ural or somewhere in Siberia. And WHO/WHERE they got the idea from is ALSO unclear: we can track DOZENS of different dumpling ideas and recipes, but it’s so hard to figure out who inspired who. One dialect of Chinese called jiaozi (potstickers) as baomian. Is that a replication of “Pelmen” in Chinese, meaning they took the word from Siberia, or is Pelmen a replication of Baomian? WE don’t know!  Anyway, the basic rules come down to this: Pelmeni are made with a THIN, unleavened dough, typically with raw internal ingredients pre-cooking, and their fillings are almost always savory., and they’re almost always boiled. And, as I mentioned last time, they’re often served with sour cream, vinegar, mustard, or horseradish.

The WORD originally meant something like “ear bread”, referring to the small, wrinkled, and round nature of the dumplings. The classic theory is that they were developed as a way to preserve meat during winter: you’d slaughter animals in the fall, put their meat in dough shells, and freeze the whole ensemble. It would STAY frozen for months, since, you know, we’re talking about Russian WINTERS here.

A beautiful time of year for invasions, as some idiots believe.

Their small size made them quick-cooking, so you wouldn’t need a ton of fuel to turn the frozen meat into edible dumplings, making them an even better meal option for those living in the cold. Some believe that the recipe was originally developed in the Urals, and that it was this ease of use in winter climes that caused it to be such a great hit in Siberia, a region noted for its chill even by Russian standards. Indeed, many Russian markets label frozen pelmeni as Siberian Pelmeni in reference to the Siberian habit of freezing them.

So that’s the Pelmeni, enjoyed by Russians, Kazakhs, Ukrainians, and the Polish. So what are Pierogi?

PIE IN THE SKY HOPES

Pierogi are POLISH Dumplings that use a similar dough to Pelmeni, but thicker. Their name means…well it means ‘dumplings’ now, but it originally was connected to something close to “Pies”. In fact, the Russian word FOR Pie is, written in the Latin alphabet, pirog. Which is why the Russian tend to call Pierogi (which, I should note, is by NO MEANS the only spelling: both these guys and Piroshky can be spelled in like, 11 different ways) varyenyky…which is also the name for ANOTHER kind of dumpling, which is why we’re in Etymological HELL right now, instead of “Etymological Botanical Gardens”.

Which are really lovely, I have to say. A lot of fun, meandering paths, instead of these spite-fueled death spirals.

Well, I said “another kind of dumpling, but it would be somewhat closer to say that Varenyky is the Ukrainian version OF pierogi. Or rather, it’s the easiest way to explain it to a non-Eastern European audience.

What distinguishes them from Pelmeni and Piroshky is that they’re of middling size, typically about 3 inches across instead of Pelmeni’s 1. They also have thicker dough, and their fillings tend to be pre-cooked. They’re very commonly stuffed with cooked onions, mashed potatoes, soft or melted cheese, or mixtures of all three. They can also be made with meat, cabbage/sauerkraut, and/or filled with dessert options like fruit and sweetened cheese.

These guys are frequently boiled, (indeed, the Ukrainian name for them means “boiled “I definitely spent the time to look this up while being harassed by Old Tongue Vulture in Etymological Hell!”) but are typically baked or fried just before presentation. They can be served with caramelized onions, crumbled bacon, sour cream, or sautéed mushrooms. In short, if you’re having a problem remembering which is which, pelmeni are basically Russian tortellini, while Pierogi are Polish Ravioli.

Which, I mean, can YOU determine if these are Pierogi or Ravioli from a quick glance?

One SUPER fun overlap Is that one popular form of Polish pierogi is the pierogi Ruskie, which is the kind filled with cheese, potatoes, AND fried onions. It’s super fun because it’s a false cognate. Reading that name, you might assume it means “Russian Pierogi”, and you’d be WRONG. (A “cognate” is a word with a similar root or etymology. A False cognate is a word that appears to have such a connection, but misleads you. Two fun examples from Spanish: embarrazado does not mean “embarrassed” as you might guess, but “pregnant”. And exito doesn’t mean “exit”, it means “success”.) Well, technically it’s not really a False cognate so much as an imprecise one. “Ruskie” in this sense means “Of Rus”, a land also called “Ruthenia”. Because what happened is, CENTURIES ago, there was a confederation of Slavic regions that was ruled from Kiev. And that region called itself Rus, while Latin speaking nations called it Ruthenia. Centuries later, it broke up, and several parts of it all decided to keep the name. That’s while there’s now Russia, Belarus, and…the Ukraine, whose capital IS the former capital of Rus, Kiev, and thus the Ruskie confusion. POLAND remembers because…well because The Kievan Rus are the ones who named THEM, calling the region the Polans. Or “great fields”.

So we’ve got Ukrainian Ruskies named for Polish Pierogis, which in Ukraine are Varenyky, and everyone’s stealing from Kievan Rus. AND WE’RE ONLY HALFWAY THROUGH THIS FUCKING EXPLANATION. I TOLD YOU THIS WAS HELL. 

Pirouette has too many vowels

That’s not even fucking related, except as a follow-up example of a false cognate: Pierogi and Piroshky look alike because they both come from the same Pie (and before that “feast”) root. Pirouette comes from like, French-Roman for “top”, as in the children’s toy.  Anyhow, Piroshky. While the WORD looks a lot like pierogi (and can look even MORE like it, depending on how you spell either one), luckily, this DISH looks very different from the first two: while pelmeni and pierogi use the same dough, just with different thicknesses and one extra fold, Piroshky use a completely different dough, going for a yeasted dough that is then baked or fried. The results are VERY different looking.

Fun little connection to the Pelmeni: while I didn’t bring it up in Monday’s post, there was a Piroshky shop literally built INTO the complex of my father’s hospital, which I ate from once or twice.

The word is also easy to understand, because we already set up the basis: PIrozhki are Russian (and Ukrainian), and are the DIMINUTIVE of “pirogi”. They’re little pies. That’s it. Like, you know Hostess fruit pies? These are the Russian equivalent. Except they can be savory too. THE IMPORTANT THING is that they have a more bready dough, and a darker outer crust. Thy can have meat, sautéed mushrooms, potatoes, fruit, whatever inside. They’re also the inspiration for the North Dakotan bierocks,…a recipe that…has just triggered some kind of weird mental breakdown, as I have just become convinced that I made them at some juncture, despite no evidence that I can find at the moment. I feel like…I made them FOR something? Like a family member had an event that needed them? I don’t know, but I’m suddenly beset by memories I can’t prove. And also checking my records for that forced me to go back through my pictures, including several of now deceased pets and family members, so holy shit this process really is like Hell.

I…now want to be done with this much quicker than I anticipated. Look, Pirozhky are a baked/Fried good. You’d get ONE as a street food. Pelmeni and Pierogi are more like meals, where you get a bunch of them as an entrée. Let’s hit the last guy before I go rifle through my family member’s phones to see if I just took the pictures on the wrong phone, and I really did make Bierocks.

Babushka, Eat your Pampushka

This one is super fucking easy. Pampuchy are Polish dumplings/buns that are basically just donuts. Their name comes from the German for Pancake (pfannkuchen) They’re fluffy little balls of steamed dough. You can serve them with fruit/jam, or wioth butter and cinnamon, or you can make them savory and stuff them/serve them with sauce or meat.

Shown here with none of those things, because it was REMARKABLY hard to find copyright-free pictures of this thing.

The Ukraine makes a type of Fried doughnut, treated the same way, called pampushka, hence Title Jon’s pun.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, this bierock thing is seriously freaking me the fuck out. I was going to teach you some kind of lesson about getting what you wished for, but I’m too worked up, so look, I had the Time Stone to fix this all along, and could have taken us back at any time. And YES, I know that’s not how the fucking Time Stone works, but past me fucked up his Marvel continuity because that was the future of Current me, who is too distracted to care.

Meet back Monday when we make whatever the fuck I come up with for the Football game once I resolve the existential Crisis this weird meatball thought has triggered in me. (EDITOR’S NOTE: Jon has inspected all the pictures on several media devices, and found no evidence of his believed project, but looking at the recipe has made him MORE sure he’s made it before, so…that’s fun. )

This existential crisis also delayed this week’s Patreon post, which Jon will strive to have up this evening. He hopes any despairing Patrons while away the time on our social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, while he works on that.

MONDAY: I JUST TOLD YOU I DON’T KNOW YET. IF I CAN GET BRISKET TIPS AND THE FORECASE SAYS ONGOING THREE WEEKS OF RAIN WILL STOP IN TIME, MAYBE BURNT ENDS? OR SOURDOUGH BREAD? I DON’T KNOW.

THURSDAY: IF WE DO SOURDOUGH BREAD, I COULD TALK ABOUT MY TIME AT A BAKERY. OR WE’LL DO A MEANDERING AMERICA’S MENUS. OR SOMETHING.