Tri-C Makes World’s Largest Pierogi

Students and chefs cook up 215.5-pound pierogi for Cleveland Eats Culinary Festival

One-hundred-seventeen pounds of peeled potatoes. Fifteen pounds of grated cheddar cheese. Ninety-six pounds of dough made from flour, water, egg yolk, vegetable oil and salt.

That is the recipe for a world record at the Hospitality Management Center of Excellence at Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C^®).

More than 20 students and chef instructors made a record-breaking 215.5-pound pierogi for the opening night of Tri-C’s Cleveland Eats Culinary Festival, held Sept. 15-16 at downtown’s Mall B outdoor event space.

The team — led by Tri-C’s Karen Monath — worked from morning to night producing the cheese-and-potato-packed monster. The dumpling measured roughly 42 inches long, 20 inches wide and 5 inches high.

The tasty mass easily topped the 123-pound pierogi now recognized as the world’s largest by the Guinness World Records. That appetizer was made in Pittsburgh in 2014. Tri-C intends to submit documentation to have its pierogi verified as the record holder.

Monath set a goal of 216 pounds given Cleveland’s “216” area code.

“Nobody had done anything close to this before, but I knew our students were up to the challenge” said Monath, the College’s associate dean of hospitality management. “We dream big at Tri-C and in Cleveland.”

Making the massive pierogi took massive effort and months of planning. The project required a custom-made basket and cooking tub to hold the pierogi as it spent more than two hours in boiling water.

Six chefs muscled up to lift the pierogi in and out of the tub at the College’s Hospitality Management Center on Public Square.

A representative from Cuyahoga County’s Weights and Measures Division oversaw the official weigh-in. Exuberant cheers filled the kitchen as he announced the record-breaking result on the scale.

Minutes later, a van hauled the new heavyweight champ to the Cleveland Eats site for an unveiling to the festival crowd. Forks came out soon after.

No leftovers were reported.

September 18, 2017

John Horton, 216-987-4281 john.horton@tri-c.edu