Potato Zrazy with Mushrooms – Stuffed Potato Cakes Recipe
When I was little, we often made potato zrazy at home, filled with mushrooms or with minced chicken and onion. Strictly speaking, this wonderful dish isn't zrazy at all: real zrazy are made from thinly pounded veal (or mince) rolled around a filling. They are closer to the Ukrainian dish called zavyvanets. Still, over the years the name stuck in our family, so that's what we call them — potato zrazy with mushrooms (or with pork mince, chicken and so on).
Zrazy are a well-known meat dish that originated in Lithuanian cuisine and are now common to many cuisines: Ukrainian, Belarusian, Polish and others. Essentially, it's a roll of very thinly pounded meat with a filling, or a special kind of cutlet. Pounded beef or veal is seasoned with spices and wrapped around a filling, like a roulade. The filling is most often mushroom, but almost anything goes — vegetables, cooked grains, eggs, even minced meat or mashed potatoes.
In Isaac Babel's immortal Odessa Stories, Froim Grach's daughter Basya warmed up zrazy for her father in a cast-iron pot, and the zrazy smelled of a happy childhood. There's no telling what kind of zrazy they were, but for some reason I remember the ones our neighbour made long ago: a ball of minced beef with a filling of rice and butter inside. They were fried in butter until slightly crisp. Incomparable and delicious. Ah, happy childhood!
At home we always made zrazy with mushrooms. My grandmother always grew plenty of potatoes, so potato dishes were held in high esteem. Incomparable deruny with sour cream, a homemade treat we still make from a recipe handed down from generation to generation. Fried potatoes with pork cracklings are a lavish country dish you just can't stop eating.
Mushrooms were never a problem either. A few decades ago, buying button mushrooms or oyster mushrooms was quite difficult, but wild mushrooms were always put up in large quantities.
Some of the mushrooms were preserved, and some were briefly boiled and frozen right away. Whenever needed, a portion was thawed and turned into a mushroom appetizer — quick-marinated porcini, fried chanterelles with onions, or potato zrazy. All you need is to make mashed potatoes and turn them into a potato dough, fry the mushrooms with onions, shape the zrazy around the mushrooms and then fry them. A wonderful, tasty dish from my childhood.
Ingredients
15 pieces
- Potatoes 1 kg
- Boiled wild mushrooms 300 g
- Onions 2-3
- Vegetable oil 50 ml
- Egg 1
- Flour 2-3 tbsp
- Salt, black pepper, ground coriander, hot pepper to taste
Step-by-step recipe
- First of all, to make potato zrazy you need to make ordinary mashed potatoes. I don't think that will cause any difficulty, though anything can happen. It's best to use floury potatoes for the mash: you are more likely to get a good purée rather than a gluey mass — or maybe I'm just lucky?
- Peel the potatoes, removing the eyes, and cut them into 4–6 pieces. Put the potatoes in a pot, add a pinch of salt (not much — the potato dough will be salted later) and cover with cold water. Put the pot on the heat and boil the potatoes until tender. As a rule, if a knife goes into a potato easily, without any effort, it is done.
- Drain the water from the pot. Mash all the potatoes with a potato masher until smooth. By the way, I've never been sure what that tool is properly called: masher, crusher, pounder, potato press… Let the mashed potatoes cool completely.
- While the potatoes are cooling, you can make the filling. We prefer wild mushrooms for the filling, although many people use store-bought button or oyster mushrooms. We usually make zrazy with slippery jacks, birch boletes and orange birch boletes. These mushrooms aren't as prized as porcini, but they make a very good mushroom filling.
- Peel the onions and slice them into thin strips. Fry the sliced onions in vegetable oil until nicely golden. The onions must be very well fried — this is important. Well-fried onions have a unique, slightly sweet flavour.
- In mushroom season, you can briefly boil fresh wild mushrooms. In winter, you can always thaw mushrooms prepared in advance. Finely chop the boiled mushrooms with a knife. Add the mushrooms to the fried onions, stir and fry everything together for 2–3 minutes over medium heat. Then season the onions and mushrooms with salt and pepper and add a pinch of ground coriander (optional). Cover the pan with a lid, reduce the heat to minimum and braise the mushrooms and onions for 5 minutes. Then take the pan off the heat and let the mushroom filling cool.
- Don't add spices, liquid, butter or milk to the mashed potatoes. Once the mash has cooled completely, add one chicken egg, salt, black pepper and hot pepper to taste. Mix the mash very thoroughly with a fork. It should be completely smooth in texture.
- Add wheat flour — at least 2 heaped tablespoons. Mix the mashed potatoes and flour thoroughly into a very soft dough that still sticks to your hands just a little. If the dough is too soft, the zrazy may lose their shape; if it's too stiff, you'll end up with potato doughnuts.
- Pinching off pieces of the potato dough, shape them into flat rounds about the size of a bottle bottom, or a little bigger, about 15 mm thick. Dust a large plate or chopping board generously with flour and lay the potato rounds on the flour.
- Press the centre of each round lightly with your fingers to make a small hollow. Put 1 tbsp of mushroom filling into each hollow.
- Wrap the potato dough around the mushroom and onion filling, the way you would seal closed pies. Shape them into flat, oblong patties, similar in shape to fish cakes. Place the shaped potato patties on a floured plate.
- Heat 2–3 tbsp of oil in a frying pan. You can use sunflower or olive oil, or butter if you like — but keep in mind that zrazy burn more easily in butter. Place the prepared mushroom zrazy in the hot oil, reduce the heat and fry.
- Once a golden crust forms, turn the zrazy over and fry the other side. The frying time is up to you — what matters is that the potato dough is thoroughly fried and cooked all the way through. In total, frying can take 15 to 30 minutes, so keep an eye on them. Don't cover the pan with a lid: steam will build up and the zrazy will crack or fall apart.
- Arrange the finished zrazy on plates, 2–3 per serving. Drizzle them with the remaining hot oil and garnish with a sprig of herbs. If you like it spicy, I recommend sprinkling the dish with a pinch of coarsely ground red chilli — it's something else!
- Zrazy with mushrooms and fried onions, fried in oil — it feels like I've known them all my life; they're always delicious and always welcome. At one time we used to make lots of them and reheat them for breakfast for several days. By the way, you can also use a meat or vegetable filling, or minced chicken fillet with onions, the way it's made for crepes with chicken.
| Makes: | 15 pieces |
| Calories: | 105 |
| Prep time: | 30 mins |
| Cook time: | 1 h |
| Total time: | 1 h 30 mins |
| Category: | Main Dishes |
| Cuisine: | Ukrainian cuisine |
| Rating: |
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4.9
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