Yorkshire Pudding

 

Makes 8 servings (serving a crowd?)

Yorkshire Pudding
  • 2 cups flour
  • ¼ teaspoon baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • pinch or two of grated nutmeg
  • 2 cups milk
  • 4 eggs
  • 2 Tablespoons melted butter
  • ½ cup of meat drippings or lard (see notes)

Special equipment

a 13 x 9 inch pan

Method

Sift together the dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, beat together the milk and the eggs. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and slowly beat in the wet until smooth. Beat in the melted butter. Chill for about an hour.

Preheat your oven to 375° Over medium high heat on your stovetop, bring the 13 x 9 pan with the meat drippings to a sizzle. Give the chilled pudding mix a few more beats with a whisk and pour into the pan. Quickly remove to the oven and cook till risen with brown edges, and set in the center: about 45 minutes.

Notes

Based on a family recipe.

Ideally this should be made with the drippings of a roast beef, and maybe you can pour them off while your roast is still cooking. If you can’t or your roast hasn’t produced a full half cup, you can substitute beef tallow, which you’re not likely to have onhand, or lard, which you may.↩

In Yorkshire, they cook the pudding right underneath the roast in the oven, letting the juices drip directly into the pudding, which we’ve never tried. Heating the fat on the stovetop instead of the oven is a great timesaver.

Suggestions

Toad in the hole is nothing more than Yorkshire pudding with sausages in it: in place of the roast, cook 2 lb of sausage, cut into inch-long segments, until they just begins to brown. Toss in a thinly sliced onion, bring to a very high sizzle on the stovetop, pour in the batter, and bake in a 400° oven for 45 minutes.

Or use pork drippings instead of beef for Porkshire Pudding.

Rendering the dish as gluten-free is no simple project. Even a very hefty dose of baking powder will not get this heavy batter to rise. The trick is to make small, individual-sized puddings in a muffin tin. The proportions for approximately 12 muffin puddings is:

  • 1 cup prepared gluten-free flour mix such as King Arthur brand
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1 cup milk
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 teaspoon xanthan gum (important! makes a huge difference in how well they rise)
  • approximately 1 teaspoon of suet per muffin

Fill each muffin approximately ⅓ full with batter.