Healthy Varenyky Recipe: Buckwheat Dough and Lighter Fillings

Active time: ~1¼ hours | Total time: ~1¾ hours | Serves: 4 | Difficulty: Medium

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Quick Overview

1. Mix the dough from equal parts white and buckwheat flour with water, and let it rest for 30 minutes
2. Make a filling: potato with onion fried in a little oil, lower-fat farmer’s cheese, or sour cherries with half the sugar
3. Roll, cut, fill and seal the same way as traditional varenyky
4. Boil in lightly salted water until they float, then a few minutes more
5. Serve with plain low-fat yogurt instead of sour cream and butter

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What This Version Changes — and What It Keeps

These are the varenyky from our traditional varenyky recipe with a handful of changes. Half the white flour becomes whole-grain buckwheat flour. The potato filling is fried in one tablespoon of oil instead of three. The farmer’s cheese is a lower-fat one, and the cheese varenyky go to the table without butter. The cherry filling takes half the sugar. And plain low-fat yogurt stands in for sour cream.

The half-moon shape, the boiling, the fried onion on the potato varenyky and the three fillings all stay. Buckwheat isn’t a modern health-food addition either: older varenyky were often made with buckwheat flour, or with whatever mix of flour a household had.¹ A published recipe for buckwheat varenyky with farmer’s cheese uses wheat and buckwheat flour in equal parts, which is the ratio used here.²

The cheese varenyky are the ones for Cheese Week, the last week before Great Lent, when dairy is still allowed.³ For the Christmas Eve supper, use the lenten varenyky in the traditional article, which are made without eggs or dairy.

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Why These Swaps Work

Buckwheat flour for half the white flour. A whole grain keeps its bran, the fiber-rich outer layer, and its germ; refining wheat into white flour strips away virtually all of the fiber. Buckwheat is on the Harvard Nutrition Source list of whole grains.⁴ Per serving, the potato varenyky go from about 6g of fiber to about 10g. The flour can’t go all the way, though: dough made only from buckwheat flour is too crumbly to hold together,¹ so the wheat flour stays for the other half, and the dough comes out darker.

Less oil in the potato filling. Sunflower oil is mostly unsaturated fat,⁵ so the kind of fat was never the issue; the amount was. The NHS suggests measuring oil with a spoon to control how much goes in.⁶ One tablespoon is still enough to fry both onions golden if you keep the heat moderate and stir often; that is Heritage Healthy Kitchen’s estimate.

Yogurt instead of sour cream and butter. The NHS lists sour cream, butter and cheese among the foods that contain saturated fat, and suggests choosing lower-fat dairy.⁶ Swapping the sour cream for plain low-fat yogurt, and dropping the butter from the cheese varenyky, takes saturated fat per serving from about 5g to under 2g for the potato varenyky and from about 12g to about 3g for the cheese ones. The yogurt still gives the cold, tangy contrast to the hot dumplings.

A lower-fat farmer’s cheese. The same NHS advice covers the filling itself: lower-fat or reduced-fat dairy.⁶ The egg yolk stays to bind the cheese, as in the published recipe.⁷

Half the sugar, and honey counted as sugar. The NHS recommends no more than 30g of free sugars a day for adults, and free sugars include honey.⁸ The traditional cherry filling uses 50g of sugar for four servings; this one uses 25g, about 6g per serving. Sour cherries can take it: one published recipe sweetens 300g of cherries with just 10g of vanilla sugar.⁹ The cheese filling uses one tablespoon of honey or sugar, the lowest amount in the published recipes,⁷ and the honey at the table is a teaspoon, not a pour.

Less salt. The dough salt is halved, and the filling is salted only after tasting, which is the NHS advice for cutting salt. Adults should have no more than 6g a day.¹⁰

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Healthy Varenyky Recipe

This recipe was compiled by Heritage Healthy Kitchen from published recipes and the sources for the swaps, all listed at the end of this article. Figures that are Heritage Healthy Kitchen’s own estimates rather than taken from a published source are marked as such.

The base is the traditional recipe, itself compiled from published recipes: the dough, the potato filling, the cheese filling and the cherry filling keep its method and amounts except where a swap changes them.^11,7,12,13 The flour ratio comes from a published buckwheat varenyky recipe.² The amount of water for the buckwheat dough, the oil and sugar amounts after the swaps, the yogurt per serving, the number of varenyky and the serving sizes are Heritage Healthy Kitchen’s estimates.

The dough

Ingredients (makes about 30–35 varenyky, an estimate)

• 180g (1½ cups) all-purpose flour, plus extra for rolling
• 180g (about 1½ cups) whole-grain buckwheat flour
• 180–200ml (¾ cup or a little more) water, at room temperature
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon sunflower oil

How to make the dough

1. Mix. Combine both flours and the salt, add 180ml of the water and the oil, and stir with a spoon, then knead by hand.^11,2 Buckwheat flour drinks more water than wheat flour; if the dough stays crumbly, add the rest of the water a tablespoon at a time. That amount is an estimate.
2. Rest. Wrap the dough and rest it in the refrigerator for 30–40 minutes.²
3. Roll. Dust the board with wheat flour, not buckwheat, and roll a piece of dough thin.² Keep the rest wrapped while you work.

Filling one: potato and fried onion

• 500g (about 1 lb) floury potatoes, peeled and cut into large pieces
• 2 onions (about 300g), finely diced: one for the filling, one for serving
• 1 tablespoon sunflower oil
• ¼–⅓ teaspoon ground black pepper
• Salt, to taste

To serve: plain low-fat yogurt, about 2 tablespoons per serving.

How to make the potato filling

1. Boil the potatoes. Cover with water and boil 15–20 minutes, until a knife goes in easily. Drain.¹¹
2. Fry the onions. Fry both onions in the tablespoon of oil over moderate heat, stirring often, until golden.¹¹ The single tablespoon and the moderate heat are estimates.
3. Mash and taste. Mash the potatoes with half the onion and the pepper, then taste before adding any salt.^11,10 Keep the other half of the onion for the top, and let the filling cool.

Filling two: lower-fat farmer’s cheese, for Cheese Week

• 400g (14 oz) lower-fat farmer’s cheese (syr)
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 tablespoon honey or sugar

To serve: plain low-fat yogurt, about 2 tablespoons per serving, and 1 teaspoon of honey per serving.

How to make the cheese filling

1. Mix. Stir the farmer’s cheese with the honey or sugar and the egg yolk.⁷
2. Fill. Use 1–2 teaspoons of filling per varenyk.⁷
3. Serve. Boil as below and serve hot with cold yogurt and a teaspoon of honey.

Filling three: sour cherry with half the sugar

• 400g (14 oz) pitted sour cherries, fresh, or frozen and thawed
• 25g (2 tablespoons) sugar
• 1 tablespoon (8g) cornstarch

To serve: plain low-fat yogurt, about 2 tablespoons per serving, and the drained cherry juice.

How to make the cherry filling

1. Sugar the cherries. Toss the cherries with the sugar and leave them for about 30 minutes.¹³
2. Drain. Tip them into a sieve, keep the juice, and toss the cherries with the cornstarch.¹²
3. Fill sparingly. Two or three cherries per varenyk are enough.¹²

Shaping and boiling

1. Cut and fill. Cut circles with a glass, put the filling in the middle, fold in half and pinch the edges firmly so there are no gaps.^2,11
2. Boil. Bring a large pot of water to the boil, salt it lightly, and cook the varenyky in batches, stirring now and then so they don’t stick to the bottom.² Once they float, give cheese and cherry varenyky 2–3 more minutes;^2,12 give potato ones about 3–4, an estimate.
3. Serve. Lift them out with a slotted spoon. Top the potato varenyky with the reserved onion, and serve all three with cold yogurt; simmer the cherry juice into a quick sauce for the cherry ones.¹³

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Kitchen Tips

Buckwheat flour makes a crumbly dough on its own,¹ which is why it is mixed with wheat flour here. The published buckwheat recipe rests it in the refrigerator for 30–40 minutes before rolling,² so don’t cut that short. If the edges still crack as you fold, the dough is too dry: knead in a spoonful of water and wrap it again for a few minutes (an estimate).

Stir the pot now and then while the varenyky cook so they don’t stick to the bottom, and lift them out as soon as the time is up.²

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Nutritional Information

Per serving, one quarter of the batch (about 8 varenyky, an estimate). The traditional column is the recipe from our traditional article with 2 tablespoons of sour cream (and butter for the cheese varenyky); this version is served with 2 tablespoons of low-fat yogurt (and a teaspoon of honey for the cheese varenyky).

Nutritional values are estimates based on standard ingredient databases (USDA FoodData Central). They vary with the cheese, the yogurt and the size of the varenyky.

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Storage and Freezing

Cooked varenyky keep in the refrigerator for 3–4 days in a covered container.¹⁴ Raw ones freeze well: lay them on a floured tray, freeze until solid, then move them to a bag, and boil them straight from frozen, a little longer than fresh ones.¹⁵

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Frequently Asked Questions

Can I make the dough with buckwheat flour only?
Not well. Dough made only from buckwheat flour is too crumbly to hold together,¹ which is why the published buckwheat varenyky mix it half and half with wheat flour.²

Can I eat these during the Christmas Eve fast?
Not the cheese varenyky, and not with yogurt. For the supper, use the lenten varenyky in our traditional article, which are made without eggs or dairy.

Are these the right varenyky for Cheese Week?
The cheese ones are. In the week before Great Lent, varenyky with cheese were on the table in every house.³ This version keeps the cheese filling and makes it lighter.

How much sugar is in the cherry varenyky now?
About 6g of added sugar per serving instead of about 12g. The NHS recommends no more than 30g of free sugars a day for adults.⁸

Can I freeze them?
Yes, raw. Freeze them on a floured tray, then bag them, and boil them straight from frozen, a little longer than fresh ones.¹⁵

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The Traditional Version

The full recipe, with the history of varenyky, the holidays they belong to and the lenten varenyky for Christmas Eve, is in our traditional varenyky article.

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Further Reading & Sources

The recipe is a compilation based on the published recipes and the sources for the swaps listed here; these links are provided for readers who want to explore further.

The traditional base

2. Yevhen Klopotenko. (3 May 2023). Hrechani varenyky z kyslomolochnym syrom [Buckwheat varenyky with farmer’s cheese]. klopotenko.com. Published recipe: wheat and buckwheat flour in equal parts.
7. Yevhen Klopotenko. (14 February 2024). Solodki varenyky z syrom [Sweet cheese varenyky]. klopotenko.com. Published recipe (base: cheese filling).
9. Yevhen Klopotenko. (11 November 2022). Varenyky z vyshniamy na pari [Steamed sour cherry varenyky]. klopotenko.com. Published recipe with very little added sugar.
11. Yevhen Klopotenko. (24 October 2023). Klasychni varenyky z kartopleiu [Classic potato varenyky]. klopotenko.com. Published recipe (base: dough and potato filling).
12. Maggie Turansky. (13 November 2025). Ukrainian Sour Cherry Dumplings (Vareniki). No Frills Kitchen. Published recipe (base: cherry filling).
13. Sonya Sanford. (14 June 2023). These Ukrainian Cherry Dumplings Taste Like My Childhood. The Nosher, My Jewish Learning. Published recipe (base: cherry filling and sauce).
15. Alexandra Shytsman. (19 December 2018, updated 8 April 2025). Ukrainian Varenyky with Potato Filling and Fried Onions. The New Baguette. Freezing.

The swaps

4. Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Whole Grains. The Nutrition Source. Bran, germ and fiber; buckwheat as a whole grain.
5. NHS. (reviewed 14 April 2023). Facts about fat. Unsaturated fats in sunflower oil; soured cream and butter high in saturated fat.
6. NHS. (reviewed 19 June 2023). How to eat less saturated fat. Butter, cheese and sour cream as sources of saturated fat; lower-fat dairy; measuring oil.
8. NHS. (reviewed 19 May 2023). Sugar: the facts. Free sugars, including honey; 30g a day for adults.
10. NHS. (reviewed 17 April 2023). Salt in your diet. 6g a day; taste before adding salt.

Culture and storage

1. Liudmyla Panasiuk. (18 February 2026). Varenyky na pari, v okropi, v dukhovtsi ta morozyltsi: retsepty tista ta nachynok. Ukrainska Pravda. Zhyttia. Older varenyky made with buckwheat flour; an all-buckwheat dough is too crumbly.
3. Liudmyla Panasiuk. (3 March 2019, updated 24 February 2025). Masnytsia, a ne “Maslyana”, i varenyky zamist blyniv. Ukrainska Pravda. Zhyttia. Cheese varenyky in Cheese Week.
14. USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service. (last updated 31 July 2020). Leftovers and Food Safety. Refrigerator storage.

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Disclaimer

The information in this article is provided for educational and informational purposes only. Heritage Healthy Kitchen makes no representations or warranties regarding the accuracy or completeness of any content on this site. Nutritional values are estimates only and will vary depending on the specific ingredients, brands, and measurements used. This content is not intended as dietary, medical, or professional nutritional advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare provider regarding any dietary needs or health conditions. Heritage Healthy Kitchen is not responsible for any outcomes resulting from the use of recipes or information published on this site.

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