EASY PIROSHKI

Steps:

• 1. Begin cooking ground beef in skillet. As soon as the beef has begun to firm up, add the onion and saute until beef is nicely browned (add a tablespoon or 2 of butter if beef is too dry). Remove from heat and set aside. Rest pan tilted at an angle to allow excess grease to pool.
• 2. Prepare a place to roll out the crescent roll dough by sprinkling a little flour on a large flat surface. Open the tube and carefully unroll one of the dough bundles. Flatten it on the floured surface and push the perforated areas together to make one large slab of dough. Roll dough with rolling pin to even out the surface. Dough should become somewhat wider as you do so. Cut dough into 8 or 10 evenly sized squares (I used a pizza cutter).
• 3. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
• 4. Pour off excess grease from meat mixture, then add seasoning salt, garlic powder, and sour cream. Mix well, taste and adjust seasonings. Using one half of mixture, place equal portions of filling on each square of dough; try to use up all this half of filling in this half of dough (eat whatever won't fit!). Then fold over one corner of each square to make triangle-shaped pockets, pressing the edges to seal (if you have trouble getting seal to form, take a corner of paper towel and dry the edges, then press together again). Place piroshki on a cookie sheet and repeat process with second roll of crescent dough and second half of filling.
• 5. Once all piroshki have been sealed, cut a small slit or poke holes with fork in top of each pocket. Mix egg yolk with 2 tbs water and brush wash onto tops of pastries. Bake in preheated oven for 10 - 12 minutes until golden brown.
• 6. Variation: Another piroshki recipe I have uses mushrooms and and onion sauteed in butter as a filling--don't forget to include the sour cream and seasonings. Although...in virtually all of the several fillings given for this other recipe, dill is an ingredient, so you could substitute dill weed for the seasoning salt and add a bit of salt to compensate. Additionally, hard boiled egg is also included in nearly every filling variant; shredded cabbage is also a common ingredient (cooked first to soften, of course). Experiment; enjoy!
• 7. *(Continued from Personal Notes above--that area is never big enough for me!) Wikipedia has a thorough discussion of pierogi and a lesser entry for piroshki, specifying the two are distinct foods from each other (pierogi being more dumpling-like than piroshki). It indicates that "pirog" is a full sized pirozhok (singular of piroshki) and that "pirogi" is the plural of pirog. However, for purposes of cooking, it says pirogi/piroshki is a different dish from pierogi. Confused yet? Me, too. In the real world, no one makes that distinction so I have included both words (as well as several other alternative spellings) in the Key Words section. (To honor copyright law, I am using my own words to describe how I prepared this dish in my home kitchen.)