HOW TO MAKE A GREAT YORKSHIRE PUDDING

Ah, the humble Yorkshire Pudding. A delightful accompaniment to any roast dinner, bathed in proper homemade gravy, and god forbid you don't cook enough! A bloom of pancake cooked in fat with an initial crispness, then yielding an interior to mop up juices and gravy....

You might ask why is this here? To me it's a traditional recipe with provenance and history, and often poorly imitated. It's a simple recipe, but one that been around nearly 250 years, and is a quintessential accompaniment to a English Sunday Roast Dinner.

There is a simple rule - a Yorkshire pudding should NEVER be soggy, lumpy, or heavy....or as Stanley Holloway puts it in his "Yorkshire Pudden' monologue is something that ‘melts in yer gob like snow, an’ as light as a maiden’s first kiss…’ 

If you are are cooking for a 'Brit' then presenting a quality Yorkshire Pudding with the roast lunch will elevate your standing to a level reserved for royalty. People are known to travel miles just for the 'Yorkies' served with a lunch in pub!

Strangely the first published mention of the recipe puts it in London in 1737 as a dripping pudding (dripping being the fat from beef). Later, Hannah Glasse – another Londoner – published her ‘Art of Cookery Made Plain’ in 1747 and renamed  the 1737 ‘dripping pudding’ into ‘Yorkshire Pudding’ . The initial recipes refer to tipping batter into the fat around the roasting meet, which slowly morphed into being cooked separately in another metal tin.

Recipe accroding to Mrs Beeton, 1859

In my copy of Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management (c.1859) the cooking time was 1.5 hours! I assume due to the roasting over the fire/oven not be able to reach the required temperature.
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 The small circular Yorkshire Puddings we find today in the supermarkets appear to originate from the early 20th Century to save time and produce quantity over quality! One of the things I love about a 'Yorkie' is that given pretty much all kids love a Yorkshire Pudding, we let them prepare them for the oven. This way they get involved in the traditional family Sunday roast and beam at the positive comments from around the table congratulating them on a great batch of 'Yorkie P's'.

INGREDIENTS

This will make 10-12 decent sized Yorkshire Puddings.

140 grams Plain Flour
4 eggs (or 3 Large eggs)
200 ml of Milk
Some cooking oil or fat
​A Muffin tin

To show how easy it is - here are my kids in short video showing how easy it is to create these sumptuous goodies!

Best time to make these is when you have taken your meat out of the oven to rest (all covered in foil), whack the heat up to 200C+

PROCESS

1. Put the flour in a bowl - sieve it or don't sieve it - puritans will say sieve it but i seriously see little difference.

2. Add the eggs to the milk, mix it with a fork so it looks like custard, then add to the flour and whisk until smooth, no lumps, and you will you see a few bubbles start to appear on the surface as you have whisked in some air. Leave this to rest to 5-10 mins, then whisk again

3. Pour about a table spoon of fat / cooking oil into each hole in the muffin tin and put in the oven at 200 C. Leave this in the oven for 5 mins.

​4. When the oil is HOT remove the muffin tin and pour the batter into the holes.

Batter in the hot oil, in the muffin tin

5. Pop back in the oven for 20-25mins until done. After 10 mins or so they will puff up....after that it is the crisping process....DO NOT OPEN THE OVEN IN THE FIRST 10  MINUTES!

6. Remove. Serve with your roast and a proper gravy! And see the delight on people's faces that they are not some uniform round frozen cupcake version of a commercial yorkshire pudding!

The secret here to a good yorkie is down to 2 things
1....have the oil/fat/dripping hot enough when you pour the batter in 

2....the oven not being hot enough.

3.... don't be opening and closing the oven.....seriously....don't open the door in the first 10-15 minutes.