Polish Uszka with mushrooms (Small Dumplings)

Check out my uszka, the tiny mushroom dumplings that are a Christmas essential in our home, always served in a steaming bowl of beetroot soup (barszcz z uszkami). They belong to Wigilia, the Christmas Eve supper, and my guide to the Wigilia table sets out the rest of what goes on it.

How I make them: I cook white mushrooms, onion and dried wild mushrooms like porcini into a dry filling, roll a simple dough thin, cut small circles and fold each one round my fingertip into a little ear. This batch makes around a hundred, about ten a person, and they freeze beautifully, so I make them well ahead.

When the season allows I add foraged mushrooms too. Making uszka with the kids has become a small Christmas tradition in our house. My guide to Polish food has the rest of Polish cooking. Smacznego!

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Why You’ll Love These Uszka

• All the work happens early. Uszka freeze better than almost anything else on the Christmas table, so you can shape them weeks ahead and take the pressure off the day itself.
• They suit a meat-free Wigilia. The filling is mushroom and onion, nothing else, which is exactly why they belong in the Christmas Eve supper.
• One batch feeds a table. This makes around a hundred, roughly ten a head, which is the right order of magnitude for a family gathering.
• They turn soup into a course. A bowl of clear barszcz is lovely. A bowl of barszcz with uszka floating in it is dinner.

Uszka vs Pierogi: What Is the Difference?

They come from the same family, but they are not the same thing, and no Polish cook would confuse them. Pierogi ruskie and their relatives are palm-sized, filled generously with potato and cheese or meat or cabbage, and eaten as a meal in their own right, often fried in butter after boiling.

Uszka are deliberately tiny, barely a mouthful, and they are a garnish rather than a dinner. The filling is almost always mushroom. They are boiled and served floating in soup, never fried as the main event. The shape is the real giveaway: a pierog is a half-moon and stops there, while an uszko gets wrapped around your fingertip and the two corners pinched together into a little ring. That ring is the “little ear” the name refers to.

The simplest rule: if it is sitting in the soup, it is uszka.

A Closer Look at the Ingredients

• Plain flour Ordinary plain flour is right here. Strong bread flour develops too much gluten and fights you when you try to roll the dough thin, which is the opposite of what you want for something this small.
• Oil in the dough A small amount of oil keeps the dough supple. It rolls thinner without cracking at the edges, and cracked edges are where uszka split open in the pot.
• Dried wild mushrooms Porcini or boletus, and this is the flavour engine of the whole dish. Do not throw away the soaking water afterwards: strain it and keep it, because it will do more for a barszcz than any stock cube.
• Fresh white mushrooms These give the filling its body. Dried mushrooms alone make something intense but sparse; the fresh ones bulk it out so each dumpling has substance.
• Onion Softened first until translucent, never browned. It brings a background sweetness that stops the filling tasting flat and earthy.
• Salt and pepper Season the filling more assertively than seems sensible. It is about to be wrapped in unsalted dough and dropped into soup, and both of those dilute it.

Equipment You’ll Need

Uszka need very little kit. What matters is a pin that rolls evenly and something to lift them out of the water without tearing them.

Ingredient Substitutions

• Dried mushrooms Porcini give the classic flavour, but a mixed bag of dried forest mushrooms works beautifully and is usually cheaper. Dried shiitake will do at a push, though it pulls the filling towards something more savoury and less woodland.
• Fresh mushrooms Chestnut mushrooms give a deeper, nuttier filling than white ones. Avoid portobellos unless you scrape the gills out, because they turn the filling a murky grey.
• Plain flour Italian 00 flour makes a slightly silkier dough and rolls very thin. Wholemeal does not work here: it tears long before it is thin enough.
• Oil Melted butter in place of the oil, about 15 g for the 1.5 tablespoons, gives a richer dough with a little more flavour, worth doing if the uszka are the star rather than a garnish.
• Making them vegan The filling and the dough already are. The only thing to check is the soup you serve them in, since a barszcz built on meat stock will undo it.

How to Make Uszka, Step by Step

This mirrors the recipe card, with the reasoning behind each step and the things that go wrong folded in where they belong. The batch makes roughly a hundred uszka, which sounds like a lot until you remember that eight to ten go in a bowl of barszcz. The shaping is repetitive rather than difficult, and by the twentieth one your hands will have worked it out.

1. Soak the dried mushrooms in hot water for half an hour, then boil them in the same water for about 20 minutes, until tender. Keep the liquid. Strain it through a fine sieve or a coffee filter and leave the last spoonful behind.It is dark and very savoury, and it is the best thing you will add to your barszcz all year. Grit sinks to the bottom, which is why you leave the last of it.
2. Soften the onion, then cook the mushrooms down until the pan is dry. Keep the onion translucent, do not brown it. Cook the mushrooms until the moisture has really gone, not until it nearly has. Cool the filling completely before you fill anything. It is even better made the day before and kept covered in the fridge.Browned onion loses its sweetness and can turn a little bitter, and you will taste it in something this small. A wet filling is the main reason a seal fails, because the damp works into the dough edge while you are shaping the rest. Warm filling softens the dough and makes sealing harder.
3. Flour and salt in the bowl, then the hot water and oil into a well in the middle. Bring it together with a fork before you use your hands. If it looks a little dry, leave it.The fork saves you fighting a sticky mess. Flour keeps soaking up water for a few minutes, so a stiff dough often comes good under your hands.
4. Knead until it is smooth and elastic, then rest it for a full half hour under a cloth. Do not skip the rest. If it still fights you after resting, cover it and give it another ten or fifteen minutes, do not add flour. If your dough keeps shrinking back when you roll it, that is the gluten, and this is how to relax it. If it feels too dry while kneading, wet your hands instead of adding water.Dough that has not rested springs back and tears as you roll, and more rolling will not fix it. Wet hands are much easier to control than pouring in water.
5. Roll a quarter of the dough at a time, about two millimetres thick, and cut circles of four to five centimetres. Keep the rest wrapped. Use a small cutter or the rim of a shot glass. Gather the offcuts, knead them briefly and roll again. Aim for the thickness of a coin, not paper thin.Dough dries at the edges within minutes in a warm kitchen, and dry dough splits when you fold it. A drinking glass is too wide, at seven or eight centimetres. These boil in a soup, and a very thin ear will not survive it.No small cutter? cut the sheet into squares and fold them corner to corner. It is a real Polish shortcut, there are no offcuts, and the finished ear looks much the same.
6. No more than a third of a teaspoon of filling in each circle. It will look mean. Press the air out as you close them.Overfilling is the commonest reason they burst in the pot. Trapped air expands in boiling water and does the same.
7. Fold into a half-moon and press the curved edge firmly with dry fingers. Brush any flour off the seam first. If your dough has dried a little, run a wet fingertip along the edge.Flour on the seam stops it sticking. A fresh dough seals on its own.
8. Bring the two pointed corners together around the tip of your finger and pinch where they meet. Set each one on a floured tray under a slightly damp cloth as you go. Boil one on its own before you shape the whole batch.Your finger is what gives you the ear shape instead of a flat parcel. The test one takes two minutes and tells you whether the dough is the right thickness, whether the seal holds and whether the filling is seasoned, while you can still fix all three.
9. Cook them in plenty of salted water at a gentle simmer, not a rolling boil. They rise after a couple of minutes. Give them another 2 to 3 minutes after that and taste one to make sure, then lift them out with a slotted spoon. If they are not going straight into the soup, toss them in a little butter or oil.A hard boil knocks them together and splits the seams. Without the butter they stick together on the plate.

Recipe Card for Polish Uszka with mushrooms

Check out my other Recipes:

Uszka at Wigilia, and Meat Uszka the Day After

Uszka are a Christmas Eve dish first and a dumpling second. On Wigilia they arrive in the opening course, floated in a bowl of clear beetroot barszcz, and the filling is meat-free so it sits comfortably with the tradition of a fasting supper. That is also why the barszcz stays clear rather than being enriched with cream: the uszka are the substance in the bowl. The other soup on many Wigilia tables is mushroom, and my wild mushroom soup gives the everyday version along with the two changes that make it the fast-day one.

Count on eight to ten per person in a bowl of barszcz, more if they are the only starter. A batch this size goes a long way, which matters on an evening built around twelve dishes. Make them well ahead and freeze them, the way most Polish kitchens do.

Making Uszka Ahead and Freezing Them

This is the part that makes uszka practical. They freeze better than almost anything else on the Christmas table, so the work can be done weeks early.

• Let them dry off for a few minutes before they go anywhere. A Polish cook on Ania Gotuje puts it well: let the shaped uszka air-dry briefly, chill them, and only then bag them. A slightly dry surface is what stops them gluing together, and when you take the bag out you can tap it once and they fall apart singly.
• Freeze them raw. Spread the shaped uszka on a lightly oiled tray so they are not touching and freeze for about an hour and a half, until firm. Then tip them into bags. Because they froze separately they will not weld together, so you can take out as many as you need.
• Freeze them cooked. Drain well and toss in a little oil so they do not stick, then use the same trick: firm them up on a tray first, bag them afterwards.
• Cook them from frozen, and give them longer than you think. Straight into the water, no thawing. Raw frozen uszka need about six to eight minutes, counting from when they rise, rather than the two or three a fresh one takes. Frozen cooked ones only need warming through, two or three minutes. Either way, put them into water at a full boil, because frozen uszka bring the temperature right down.
• Or fry them. Thaw cooked uszka and fry them in butter until golden. That is what to do with the ones left in the bowl on Boxing Day.
• In the fridge. Cooked uszka keep up to three days, covered, counting the day you made them.

One thing worth saving while you cook: strain the water the dried mushrooms soaked in and keep it. It is far too good to pour away, and it will deepen a barszcz, a żurek or a pot of bigos.

FAQ for Polish Uszka with mushrooms

What are uszka?

Tiny “little ears”, small Polish dumplings filled with mushrooms and traditionally served in clear beetroot barszcz at Christmas. It is pronounced OOSH-kah, and you will also see it written ushka in English, or uszka z grzybami in Polish, which just means uszka with mushrooms. One on its own is an uszko.

What mushrooms are used?

Dried wild mushrooms like porcini or boletus for the flavour, with fresh white mushrooms for body. Soak the dried ones first and keep the soaking water for the soup.

Can I freeze uszka?

Yes. Freeze them raw on a tray, then bag them up and cook them from frozen in boiling salted water.

How many uszka do I need per person?

Eight to ten in a bowl of barszcz is normal, and a dozen if the soup is the whole first course. They are small, so people eat more of them than you expect. Making a big batch and freezing it is the sensible approach.

Can I make uszka with only dried mushrooms?

Yes. My filling uses fresh and dried together on purpose, because the fresh mushrooms give it body while the dried ones bring the deep woodland flavour. A filling made entirely from soaked dried mushrooms is the older, more austere version and it tastes wonderful. If you go that way, chop them finely so the filling still holds together.

Can I use frozen wild mushrooms?

I would not. With frozen mushrooms you cannot tell the quality. Get dried ones from a good source instead: dried porcini are in most supermarkets, and you do not need many for the flavour. You can also use more white mushrooms and less porcini.

Can I make the mushroom filling in advance?

Yes, a day ahead is ideal and it saves you a job. Keep it covered in the fridge and make sure it is properly cold before you start filling, because warm filling softens the dough and makes sealing much harder.

Can I keep raw uszka in the fridge overnight?

Better not. Overnight the dough soaks up moisture from the filling, goes soft and sticky, sticks to the tray and tears when it goes into the water. If you are making them a day or more ahead, freeze them raw and cook them from frozen.

Are uszka vegetarian?

As written here, yes. The filling is mushroom and onion with no meat, which is exactly why uszka belong on the Wigilia table, where the supper is traditionally meat-free. If you are cooking for a strict Christmas Eve, check that the barszcz you serve them in is built on a vegetable base rather than a meat stock.

My mushroom filling tastes bitter. What went wrong, and can I save it?

This comes up every year on the Polish forums and it has three possible causes. Most often it is the mushrooms themselves: podgrzybki, bay boletes, can carry a genuine bitterness, particularly older ones, and drying concentrates it. Home-dried mushrooms that were dried too hot and went dark can also turn bitter. Second is the pepper, which is easy to overdo in something this small. Third is scorched onion or garlic, which turns acrid rather than sweet. To rescue a batch, stir in more softened onion and a knob of butter to dilute it, and a small pinch of sugar will take the edge off. If it is badly bitter from the mushrooms, no amount of seasoning will hide it and it is better to start the filling again.

Is the mushroom soaking liquid always worth keeping for the barszcz?

Almost always, and it is the best free ingredient in this recipe. The one exception follows from the question above: taste it before it goes anywhere near your soup. If the dried mushrooms were bitter, that bitterness is in the liquid too, and tipping it into a pot of barszcz you have spent days fermenting is a miserable way to find out. A spoonful on the tongue takes a second and settles it. I keep it in a closed jar in the fridge for a few days and make the barszcz soon after, and it has never been a problem.

How many uszka will I actually get, and do they have to be identical?

Around a hundred from this batch, though cooks on the Polish threads report anywhere from eighty-five to a hundred and thirty from the same quantity of dough, entirely depending on how thin they roll and how small they cut. So do not worry if your number is different. They also do not need to match. The first dozen will look clumsy, the last dozen will look like a professional made them, and once they are floating in dark red barszcz nobody can tell them apart anyway.

Serve with Traditional Polish Beetroot Soup

Uszka are traditionally served in clear beetroot soup (barszcz czerwony), which you will see called borscht in English. Uszka in borscht is the Christmas Eve pairing, and the soup has to be a clear one: a creamed soup drowns them. If you’re planning a proper Polish Christmas table, I highly recommend serving these dumplings with my Polish Beetroot Soup (Barszcz) recipe.

For an even deeper, more authentic flavour, you can take it one step further by adding zakwas, a fermented beetroot starter used in traditional Polish kitchens. Zakwas adds natural acidity, depth, and complexity that store-bought soups simply can’t match.

• Zakwas: Homemade Beetroot Starter for Barszcz

Both can be prepared in advance and will lift your uszka into something truly special.

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A Few Words from the Chef

I hope you enjoyed making these Polish uszka as much as we do at home. They may be small, but they carry a lot of tradition, and for me they’re one of those dishes that truly mark the start of the festive season.

If you give this recipe a try, I’d love to hear how it turned out or how you make uszka in your own family. Smacznego!

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