We just celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary and decided to throw a party for our friends and family. It was also Zachary‘s 3rd birthday, so it was a combo event! First up was the perogy party for us, and then a cake for the little one (and balloons, and hats, and blow-outs – his 3 requests!). Now you may be wondering, what the heck is a perogy party? Well… let me tell you more!
So yes, a perogy party is something I sort of invented – but it goes back to our wedding 5 years ago when we served a midnight perogy bar. Actually, that was a custom request too (although they did have a mashed potato bar on their list of options – so it’s pretty similar).
Anyways, perogies are like awesome little hand-held mashed potatoes pasta things so I figured that it would be easy to make fun combinations for our party. Similar to the wedding perogy buffet, but instead of the traditional onions, bacon, sour cream – there would be a lot more options!
Oh, and I am aware that there are a lot of spelling variations for the word perogy, like pierogi or pirogi. I’m going to use the same “perogy” throughout, but I do mean pirogi/pierogi if you’re more used to the traditional spelling.
So the three main perogy offerings we had at our party were Pizza Perogies, Taco Perogies and Regular Perogies.
Traditional/Regular Perogies
To me, typical perogies always come with bacon and onions. I personally don’t like onions, but still cooked one for our guests (we should have gotten 2 though!)
- Bacon
- Fried onions
- Grated cheddar cheese
- Sauerkraut
- Sour Cream
I wouldn’t be satisfied with just the regular perogy toppings and got the idea for our next perogy “station” because of the sour cream. I thought to myself – what other types of food uses sour cream – and bingo: tacos!
Taco Perogy Toppings
Our pitfall with the taco perogies is that I bought avocados that were too hard, and it was really difficult to make the guacamole. But other than that, I think that the taco perogies were the crowd favourite!
- Sour cream
- Guacamole
- Salsa
- Grated cheese
- Shredded lettuce
- Black beans
- Corn
- Ground meat with taco seasoning
To me, those are the usual taco toppings, but you could always add different items depending on your Mexican (or Tex-Mex) tastes!
Our third and final perogy flavour was the pizza perogies! These ones were probably conceived because I liked the double-p name, but also… people LOVE putting their own toppings on their pizzas.
Pizza Perogy Ideas
Like the taco toppings, pizza toppings are probably a lot more debated – so feel free to include the items you like. I went for super simple (ie: things I didn’t have to cook ahead of time and could just throw in a bowl).
- Grated pizza mozzarella cheese
- Pizza sauce
- Pepperoni slices
- Pineapples
- Olives
- Mushrooms
What other pizza toppings are there? Peppers, bacon, those gross onions? Ha! As I said, feel free to update the toppings however you like!
BONUS: Perogy Poutine
I just thought about this one yesterday actually: perogy poutines! Poutine is a stereotypical Canadian dish that consists of fries, cheese curds and gravy. Now just substitute the fries for perogies, and you can bet that it would also be a hit at your perogy party!
Prepping for a Perogy Party
I usually like my party prep to be easy and quick, and I tried to plan the perogy party with that in mind. Most of the toppings just had to be opened from their cans/jars and put in a bowl (I even bought the pre-shredded cheese!) but some things required a bit more time.
Here is a run-down of what the pre-party prep looked like:
- Chop and fry onion
- Bake bacon then chop into little pieces (you could also buy bacon bits)
- Fry the ground beef with taco seasoning
- Clean and chop lettuce
- All items in bowls
- Make guacamole (see notes above about hard avocadoes, ha!)
- Cook perogies
We had maybe 20 guests? We didn’t count everyone, but let’s say that’s a good number. I cooked 3 bags of 2kg of perogies, and we had a bit of leftovers by the end, so possibly used 5 kg of perogies for 20 people (that’s over 10 pounds!). I just bought the plain perogies (ie potatoes and cheese) but I know there are a lot of pre-made perogy flavour options too. So you could always go that route with more traditional toppings!
Perogy Cooking Tips
The bags of perogies I bought said to either boil them or pan-fry them. Usually, when we cook perogies just for us, I do a combo and par-boil them, then finish in the frying pan. I knew that you could also bake them, and I was able to get about 1 pound of perogies per baking sheet (and did 2 pounds at once).
I boiled and pan fried one of the bags, but it required constant watching/standing over the stove. By comparison, they only take about 15 minutes to bake in the oven and it’s pretty hands-off, so that was definitely the most convenient option!
My big takeaway would be to possibly bake/cook your perogies ahead of time. While I had a good batch or two ready for our dinner time, our house was pretty hot by this point (and it was the hottest day so far and we hadn’t turned our A/C on yet!). It would have been a good idea to have them cooked and staying warm in a crockpot or our toaster oven or something (or even throw them back in the oven right before).
Lesson learned!
Either way, I think the perogy party was a good idea because people could pick and choose how they wanted their perogies. I did warn people ahead of time that perogies would be the only thing we were serving (and not to expect salads or something), so hopefully, we didn’t dissappoint :)
So, are you ready to host your own perogy party now!? I would definitely do it again (maybe it will be our thing?), and you could always come up with different combinations of toppings.
Like… dessert perogies! Now there’s something I can totally get behind :)
Oh, I just remembered one last thing! I had bought two types of sour cream, a regular one and a “premium” one. I found the latter to be a bit hard, so people definitely went for the one they recognized (and could easily scoop out of the container).
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