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I'm half Carpatho-Russian, the love of pierogies is in my blood, but my recent gluten sensitivity has stopped me from eating them, and I really miss them as they taste great and give you a lot of energy (the potatoes really help).

So can someone tell me what I need to swap out to make pierogi gluten-free?

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  • I have no experience with them, but there are recipes out there for making your own gluten free pasta. I don't know how they'd hold up in sheets, though. epicurious ; serious eats
    – Joe
    Jan 24, 2017 at 17:15

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The main source of gluten in pierogi (the plural is pierogi, the singular is actually pierog) is the flour in the dough. You should be able to substitute regular flour for a gluten free version (eg rice flour) to make them gluten free. The same goes for whatever filling you are using, if you would regularly use flour as a thickening agent try corn starch or a gluten free flour instead. It's important to remember, however, that many gluten free flours do not bind as easily as wheat flour, and thus you may need to use more butter than usual.

EDIT

Pierogi dough, when made from scratch, dries very quickly, even moreso with gluten free flour. Be sure to cover the unused dough with a bowl and only take small chunks out at a time while you are forming and filling your pierogi.

Source: Was taught to make pierogi by an elderly Polish woman in my youth, have a niece and sister with celiac's disease

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    You can try using margarine or another butter substitute, but these rarely have the flavours one gets from real butter. The dough should still stay together, though. It's also important to remember many butter substitutes contain chemicals that can be worse for you than the fat in butter. I personally prefer to stick to real butter when cooking if possible, or imperial shortening if cooking for someone with a dairy sensitivity.
    – Cameron
    Jan 24, 2017 at 16:37
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    Alternatively you may want to try potato flour, I have never tried it for pierogi but theoretically it should work.
    – Cameron
    Jan 24, 2017 at 17:19
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    And here I assumed it was "pierogus" all these years. (Just kidding.)
    – Joshua Engel
    Jan 24, 2017 at 17:55
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    @Joe if you wanted to get particularly fancy you might try a blend of rice and potato flour, but I would not buy it pre-blended as as you say, they are quite expensive, and you can generally get more than double the amount for the same price if you blend it yourself. This is speculation but a blend of 3/4 rice to 1/4 potato flour would likely make very good pierogi dough, as the potato flour binds much more readily than rice flour, but using exclusively potato flour can lead to very heavy dough with a strong potato flavor.
    – Cameron
    Jan 24, 2017 at 19:37
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    If dairy is not a problem, I have found that finely ground GF flour blends that have powdered milk added perform and taste the best in all applications. One brand of such flours is Cup4Cup. There are also several GF cookbooks that have recipes for flour blends, one of the most thoroughly researched being the America's Test Kitchen book.
    – Todd Wilcox
    Jan 25, 2017 at 12:42

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