KetoNick's Pierogi

Keto pierogi served with Dijon pork rind crusted chicken thighs and braised radishes

Somebody on reddit's keto recipes subreddit made a request for someone to create a keto version of pierogi, and as a huge fan of Polish food myself, I thought it was an excellent idea. The filling was the easy part; mashed cauliflower is an easy and delicious substitute to mashed potatoes. The pasta took some more consideration. I was torn between making a mozzarella cheese based dough similar to a keto pizza/breadstick dough, but I decided to use a keto pasta dough based on almond flour.

I'm not going to go into too much detail on the mashed cauliflower recipe - there are tons of recipes out there and you can pick the one you want to use. I just threw it together without really using a recipe. In addition to the cauliflower, I added bacon, cheddar cheese, onions caramelized in bacon fat, sour cream, heavy cream, salt, pepper, and butter.

Pierogi dough ingredients:

1. 2 cups white almond meal
2. 1/2 tablespoon xanthan gum
3. 1/2 teaspoon salt
4. 3 eggs

Procedure:

Begin by mixing the almond meal, xanthan gum, and salt in a large mixing bowl until evenly mixed. Then, just like making any other pasta dough, put the eggs in a well in the center of the dry ingredients and mix them together with a fork until it forms a dough that you can knead by hand. You can see the process here.

At this point you can begin kneading by hand

Unlike when using flour, you don't need to knead for a long time to develop the gluten. There is no gluten in almond meal, and the xanthan gum will replace the structure that the gluten would normally provide. You only need to knead the dough until it is a homogeneous mixture the consistency of a typical pasta dough, dusting with almond meal or some other keto friendly flour like coconut or soy as needed to keep it from sticking. Create a ball and wrap tightly in plastic wrap, and leave it on the counter for about half an hour.

At this point the dough can be wrapped up in plastic wrap to rest

Cut the dough ball into 4 sections, and roll it out until it is nice and thin. You can use a pasta roller if you have one. Dust with almond meal or some other keto friendly flour if it is sticky. Cut out rounds for the pierogi - I used one of the ubiquitous takeout Chinese soup containers, it was the perfect size.

Cut 2 or 3 rounds per quarter, collect the excess to roll out again 

Place just a little bit of the filling, maybe a tablespoon or two, on one side of each round. Fold over and crimp with a fork like you would with an empanada. 

I got 12 rounds, but the dough was a little thick. Try to shoot for 12-16 pierogi for the ideal thickness

Boil the pierogi in salted water for about 10 minutes, and then sauté them in butter until they're a little bit browned.

Nutrition Information: (from the sparkpeople.com recipe calculator)

Note: the nutrition information is PER PIEROGI for the PASTA ONLY based on 16 pierogi rounds.