Recipe: Popovers Yorkshire Pudding

Popovers Yorkshire Pudding

by Prof. Steve Holzinger

Serving Size: 8
Preparation Time 0:45

Ingredients

1 pint Milk
1 1/3 cups Flour
3 each Eggs
1 pinch salt
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Preparation

Combine the flour and eggs first, to get out the lumps. Then add the rest of the ingredients. Let it sit for twenty minutes. Stir again and pour into greased molds. For Yorkshire pudding, you must use beef drippings for your grease, and bake in a large shallow pan. Popovers may be baked in molds of that name or muffin pans.

Most recipes say to get the fat smoking hot before pouring in the batter. I have always done this for Yorkshire pudding, but there was a time when I was responsible for eighteen dozen popovers at 11:30 a.m.daily. I used spray oil on muffin pans and sprayed and then filled all of them, cold. I then put them on the hearth in a 350 F oven. They baked for twenty-five minutes. Perfectly.

In a rack oven I would increase the temperature to 425 F.

I made Yorkshire puddings every second Sunday, one summer. The oven had no thermostat. I turned the oven off but left the bottom round roast in it for the penultimate fifteen minutes. Then I took out the meat, turned the oven on again and shoved the roasting pan back in. Three minutes later I poured in the pudding batter, sitting the pan on the open oven door and slid it back in. At this point I dumped the shelled peas in the boiling water on the stove. When the water came back to a boil I took it off the fire, and began slicing the meat. When the meat was plated, the Yorkshire Pudding came out, and the oven was shut down for the day. The pudding (which looks amazingly like a landscape--presumably that of Yorkshire) was cut in diamonds and the peas dumped in a colander and tossed with a little butter. There was a pan of roast potatoes on the upper rack, I forgot to mention. (Peel the potatoes, put them in a hot roasting pan with a little suet and jiggle the pan to turn them occasionally. They will color where they make contact with the metal pan. They should have an hour in the oven.) The potatoes, peas and Yorkshire pudding went on the plate simultaneously. Meat juices were passed in a gravy boat.

Amy gave me this recipe, among others a year or so ago, when we worked at City Tech together. She taught baking there, and did a fabulous job. You will see some of her recipes again.

I used to make a crepe batter, 1 c milk, 1 c flour 1 egg, add a pinch of salt & pepper, and a pinch of baking powder (to cheat) and a spoon of beef drippings, and beat it totally smooth to develop the gluten for structure. It had to go in to hot fat in the roast pan! If I didn't hear the sizzle I could be sure it would stick. I also used to do it in individual ramekins and serve one to a plate, first frenchdipping the top in au jus gravy.

Amy's recipe worked so well that I gave up mine!