Whenever you serve food, you should always remember that people eat with their eyes. The more pleasant it looks on the plate the better it tastes to them.
When it comes to pierogi, your choice of plate on which they are served is very important. Placing them nicely on a Polish pottery plate makes for a very interesting effect. One of the white patterns such as the Boleslawiec dots, displays pierogi very well.
But more about putting them on the plate a little later in this page.
When you take the pierogi from the boiling pot, put them in a strainer for a new seconds to drain the water. Then put them on the plate.
With a pastry brush or small kitchen paintbrush, apply a light coat of melted butter or margarine or oil over the top. This will give them a nice shine.
If you are going to make fried pierogi, before buttering, put them directly in the frying pan with a bit of oil. Once they are browned, put them on the serving plate and now coat them with the oil from the pan or with butter.
Now you have pierogi on a plate without garnish.
Serve them with a traditional garnish on the side or put a garnish atop them.
In spite of what you see in many of the photographs of pierogi on the table, Polish pierogi are not served with a green garnish on top of them.That gives the photos more color, but it is not culturally correct
When serving pierogi to your guests, serve a few kinds. For example, serve a potato and cheese pierogi, a meat pierogi, a spinach and cheese filled pierogi, a kasza and cheese filled pierogi. And then fry some of them and boil some of them.
This makes a very pleasant meal for your guests. They get to pick and choose and try.
Also, with that panoply of pierogi, have on the table a panoply of garnishes.
And then as a final pierogi course, serve some apple filled pierogi along with cream.