With all of the hustle and bustle over the last few days I almost forgot to share with you one of my favourite parts of the roast beef dinner , the Yorkshire pudding. Yorkshire pudding is a souffle like pudding that is made with a simple batter that is baked in the drippings from the roast and those drippings are what make the puddings so addictively good! The roast beef drippings are both mixed into the batter and placed into the baking pan to form a thin layer that the pudding is cooked on. It is actually pretty easy to make Yorkshire pudding but since it is a lot like a souffle, it can fall over after it rises but with this recipe you will get it right every time.
Yorkshire pudding is often made right in the pan that you roasted the beef in but if you want to use the roasting pan to make gravy in you can easily use some other large pan or my favourite, a muffin pan. One of the tricks to get the Yorkshire pudding to rise well and to not fall is to bake it in a very hot oven and you can preheat the pan in addition to the oven to take it one step further. If your puddings do fall, don’t worry as they will still have the same amazingly light and airy texture and the same great flavour! I actually kind of like it when they do fall as that is how I always got them growing up and those holes on top are perfect for holding some melted butter or gravy.
With Yorkshire pudding and gravy on the menu those drippings don’t stand a chance of surviving and they quickly make it to the extinction list! If you do somehow end up with some left over, store them in the freezer so that you can make some more Yorkshire pudding without have to make a roast first. Speaking of the drippings, if want to make a vegetarian version you could use oil or butter instead. If you have a craving for Yorkshire pudding and you do not have any drippings around, bacon grease makes for a really tasty substitute. (You are saving your bacon grease in the fridge for things like this right?)
Yorkshire Pudding
Light and airy, souffle like puddings infused with flavour by roast beef drippings!
ingredients
- 1 cup flour
- 1 cup milk, warm
- 3 large eggs, room temperature
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 6 tablespoons roast beef drippings (or butter, oil or lard), melted
directions
- Mix the four, milk, eggs, salt and 2 tablespoons of the drippings in a large bowl until smooth.
- Divide the remaining drippings between 12 muffin holes in a muffin pan and place in a preheated 450F/230C oven for 5 minutes.
- Carefully pull the pan out of the oven and spoon the batter into each muffin hole filling them about half way.
- Return the pan to the oven and bake for 20 minutes, reduce the heat to 350F/180C and bake until golden brown all over, about 10 minutes.
- Remove from oven and enjoy while still warm.
That is a treat I love and bake on a regular basis! Your YP look amazing. Perfect when served with gravy.
Cheers,
Rosa
Your Yorkshire's look good! Just got to have them with a roast. Happy Thanksgiving Kevin.
Great British fare! My grandparents were from Yorkshire. Did you know the original idea of the yorkshire pudding was you ate it before the roast meal? They filled you up so you ate less meat – hard times. My grandad would always eat his before he ate anything else on the plate. They'd also eat them for dessert with jam.
My grandparents and my father were from Yorkshire! (We often sang “O’er Ilkley Moor ba’t Hat”). My memories of Yorkshire pudding are similar. Grandad would give a hearty toast to all assembled, once all were seated. Then he would dive into Grandma’s bowl of Yorkshire pudding and encourage us to follow suit. It was our traditional first course.
These totally remind me of popovers but more flaky! Which is always a good thing.
What's also nice is making it so it is shaped like a large bowl which you can then fill with a stew, meat or veggie.
I am afraid to say I use the frozen ones. Auntie Bessie's are nice if you live in England.
sm: I like the sound of using Yorkshire pudding as a bowl for stew!
James: I actually just learned about that last week Shan Jamie Oliver mentioned it at a talk here in Toronto when he was aske about Yorkshire pudding. I could definitely fill up on them!
As a kid Yorkshire pudding was the favourite part of the meal, with a little gravy it still is.
This stuff makes me so freaking happy!
I use the same basic recipe but was never happy with the results… until I purchased a Norpro Popover Pan. They rise beautifully into TALL puffy delights.
Looks just GORGEOUS, and the picture is fabulous…I'm sure that wasn't an easy shot to get! Happy Thanksgiving. 🙂
Your yorkshire pudding looks excellent. Beautiful photos. Have a nice day.
I've only ever had yorkshire pudding once, and I'm still so bewildered by it! I can't imagine having such a cute cuppa pudding, served alongside savoury roast beef and hefty potatoes. what an odd combination, but hats off to its creator!
Every Christmas we have roast beef with gravy and double recipe of YP. Usually use 2 pie pans for the pudding, but muffin tins sound interesting. More crust, so to speak. Last year we did not have enough drippings to make both…votes were heavily in favor of YP and the gravy lost. I missed having beef gravy on mashed potatoes.
My question is, how can I get more drippings? Suet is beef fat. We feed it to the birds. Can I just steal some before it goes out to the birds and put it on the roast? Or do I put it in the pan? Lard is rendered pig fat so I don"t want to use that for beef gravy. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
My Mom and I always ask the butcher for extra beef fat. We lay it on top of the roast so that it melts as it cooks. This gives plenty of fat for the YP. As for the gravy, about a week before the big day I make beef broth/stock. I roast bones then add veggies and boil it all until I have a lovely broth, then I reduce by at least 1/3. I freeze this and defrost it to use with the roast. About an hour before the roast is to come out I access my broth/fat supply in the pan. If I need more I pour some of the home made broth in with my roast drippings. It combines and makes lovey gravy. I ladle as much fat off as I can to use for the YP. If I’m still low I clarify a bit of butter to combine with the fat. I know it sounds like a lot of work….. but just look at Kevin’s pictures, aren’t those babies worth it???
Ask the butcher for beef fat. A pound will render into well over a cup of drippings. Should be free
Kevin, your recipe inspired me me make these for the first time. Had no roast beef, so used bacon fat. They were absolutely delicious, but did not rise very much. Used a nonstick muffin pan. Mistake?
Anna T: Roasting the beef longer will get you more drippings but then you can end up over cooking. I find that bacon grease works well for Yorkshire pudding so in this situation I normally use the pan drippings for the gravy and use bacon fat for the Yorkshire pudding.
Archer2010: Good call with using the bacon grease! The non-stick pan should not have been the problem… The key to getting them to rise is the temperature and preheating the pan.
Oh Yeah, you got the best looking Yorkies around!
My family loves Yorkshire pudding. When visiting family back in November, my sister did her best to wow the family with her towering Yorkshires but inadvertently turned the oven off (instead of just the oven timer) during the last 5 minutes or so and the things deflated (two what-was-meant-to-be big ones). *sigh* Ah well. They tasted nice, anyways! 🙂 I do like individual ones, though, and yours look perfect!
I don't think most vegetarians would consider this veggie (which was the tag I was browsing). Looks yummy though for those of us who are carnivores…
Please take off the vegetarian label. When the main point of Yorkshire Pudding is to use tallow then it is in no way vegetarian. I think you're recipe looks great but it simply isn't veggie.
Yum!
Don't know if there's any chance Anna T. is still out there, but you can definitely use beef tallow. We make our own EASILY by buying fat from a farmer who grass-feeds his cattle on pesticide-free grass. Once a month, we buy all our beef for that month from him. Less often, we buy a big hunk of beef fat from him, too. We bring it home and put it in the chest freezer if we're not going to render it immediately.
To render, simply put the fat in a very large cooking pot on a day you plan to be around all/most of the day. It will go faster if you cut/chop the fat into small pieces, but you really don't have to.
Cook on medium-low setting…around a 3 out of 10 on the knob. Have a clean mason jar or two ready.(My hunk is quite large, so we get around 2 quarts.)A small wire strainer that fits into the mouth of the jar will also be needed as the easiest way to strain out the 'cracklin's'. Every now and then, take the pot off the heat and allow to cool about 5 mins, then ladle the fat (tallow/suet)into the jar being sure to strain through the strainer on its way into the jar. Allow to cool and refrigerate.
Unlike conventional beef fat from the grocery, grass-fed fat doesn't harbor toxins, (toxins like to hang out in the fat, but grass feeding keeps the cow's system clean so there's no need to be concerned with this…See more about the good of grass-fed animal fats at http://www.westonaprice.org/
We also use tallow to make homemade bird suet feed. Just pour the fat through a strainer onto something like a cafeteria tray. Add seed. When it hardens, cut it to suit your needs.
Thanks, Closet Cooking, for posting this…I don't have my grandmother's recipe any more and your picture looks more the color/texture as hers, so I'm going to give it a whirl!
Don't know if there's any chance Anna T. is still out there, but you can definitely use beef tallow. We make our own EASILY by buying fat from a farmer who grass-feeds his cattle on pesticide-free grass. Once a month, we buy all our beef for that month from him. Less often, we buy a big hunk of beef fat from him, too. We bring it home and put it in the chest freezer if we're not going to render it immediately.
To render, simply put the fat in a very large cooking pot on a day you plan to be around all/most of the day. It will go faster if you cut/chop the fat into small pieces, but you really don't have to.
Cook on medium-low setting…around a 3 out of 10 on the knob. Have a clean mason jar or two ready.(My hunk is quite large, so we get around 2 quarts.)A small wire strainer that fits into the mouth of the jar will also be needed as the easiest way to strain out the 'cracklin's'. Every now and then, take the pot off the heat and allow to cool about 5 mins, then ladle the fat (tallow/suet)into the jar being sure to strain through the strainer on its way into the jar. Allow to cool and refrigerate.
Unlike conventional beef fat from the grocery, grass-fed fat doesn't harbor toxins, (toxins like to hang out in the fat, but grass feeding keeps the cow's system clean so there's no need to be concerned with this…See more about the good of grass-fed animal fats at http://www.westonaprice.org/
We also use tallow to make homemade bird suet feed. Just pour the fat through a strainer onto something like a cafeteria tray. Add seed. When it hardens, cut it to suit your needs.
Thanks, Closet Cooking, for posting this…I don't have my grandmother's recipe any more and your picture looks more the color/texture as hers, so I'm going to give it a whirl!
Clee: Thanks for all of that great info!
Roast beef dinner is not completewithout Yorkshire Pudding.Being a old lady myself now, but come from English grandparent on both side of family & we were raised on typical English cooking. I hace founf depending where you live in England determines what type of dripping are used which also has great bearing on how they turn out. Some will swear bthat puddings should be high topped that will have hollow part inside, while others deliberately allow the pudding to fall giving natural bowel appearance . For me either way gives you the yummiest taste this side of heaven.. The main thing I have been told is dripping should be hot hot hot so much that you can see the beginning of smoke just prior to adding in the batter, so always make sure that any bare skin is protected against spitting grease, Can be dangerouse but well worth the risk 🙂 enjoy
Coming from my English husband and all his family, the secret to a good high topped, well risen pudding is in the beating. They break the eggs into the flour and salt mixture (using self rising flour) and beat, beat beat until the mixture 'breathes'. When you stop you will see big air bubbles breaking. Then you add the milk, slowly, combining until mixed. Allow it to rest prior to cooking.
All the children in the family learn at a very young age how to beat a pudding. I bow to their perfection and allow them to make it! 😉
Also, this is fabulous as Toad in the Hole. Grill some sausages until almost done, slice into chunks, toss into a 9×9" tin which has been preheated with dripping, shortening, or lard, and pour in the pudding mixture. Bake until done and serve with onion gravy. Yum!
I was having a Yorkshire pudding catastrophe today and came across your recipe when I Googled "why are my YP flat?". I dumped the rest of my batter and started over with your recipe. Worked like a dream. Possibly the best ones I've ever made! Thank you
If you substitute butter for the beef drippings, do NOT preheat butter in muffin pan at 450 for 5 minutes! I now have a house full of butter smoke and an oven to clean. Thank you.
Kevin the second best part of yorkies is that when cold they taste great with a little bit of corn syrup drizzled on them!
Marilyn: That sounds great!
I’m so excited to try this recipe this Sunday for a friend from England who is missing traditional English fare. He’s pretty excited too. I’ve been reading all the tips ~ sure hope it turns out as beautiful and delicious as it’s supposed to! Wish me luck!
This looks like my moms Popovers! I miss them so much! This looks so tasty😁
I am thrilled to see this recipe! My folks are from England and this was a staple every time we had Christmas. My mom is 94 now and can’t remember how to make. Now I can for her! Thank you!
Thank you for sharing this recipe! My dad makes beautiful Yorkshire puddings but, with few exceptions, mine have been underwhelming thus far. That changed upon making your recipe. It’s amazing what a couple more eggs can do to really encourage those Y. puddings to poof up gloriously. My sons devoured them this evening. Here’s to another generation of Yorkshire pud enthusiasts!