Big Yorkshire Puddings

Last Updated: 18 Nov 06
Copyright 2006 by Stephen Vermeulen

Here is the result along with veggies baked in the roasting pan, gravy and some of the roast.:



Ingredients

This makes about 8 puddings (double it for a dinner party):
  • 300g Milk (or 300ml if you are measuring by volume), these rise by steam so its possible that other liquids (perhaps water or beer) could be used.
  • 115g Flour (all purpose white flour is fine, in Canada our flour comes from hard wheat and has a high gluten content which might be quite important to achieving the large rise)
  • 3 large eggs (about 60g each)
  • 4g Salt

Preparation

Dump the lot into a mixing bowl (I use the Kitchen Aid 4 litre bowl) and then mix until a smooth batter is formed, this batter will be quite runny (like that for crepes). Don't worry if there are some small lumps left, these will settle to the bottom of the bowl and won't be used.

I use a Kitchen Aid stand mixer using the wire wisk for a minute of two, basically just until the lumps of flour are gone. My Mom's recipe (which she got from her mother, who lived in Great Houghton, which is in Yorkshire) called for a very long (and tiresome beating process that had to be done with a soup spoon a couple of times over a few hours), which is why I wanted to find another recipe...

From my experimentation it appears that it is not necessary to let any of the ingredients come to room temperature first, though I will typically measure out all the ingredients into separate containers when I have some free time prior to mixing, since the yorkies are always the last step in preparing a roast dinner.

Cooking

These are very easy to cook, just a couple of essential steps need to be followed:
  1. pre-heat the oven to 450F (I use convection), this will be easy since you've just pulled the roast out and you just need to bring the oven up a bit. The idea is to cook the yorkies while the roast is "standing".
  2. take a 12 compartment muffin tin and put about 5mm of oil into each of the compartments, (Canola is good because of its high smoke point (corn oil may be better still) and its one of the more healthy oils, and its made in Alberta too) then put into the oven to heat. You should put this on a baking sheet to catch any oil that gets spilled later. This needs about 5 minutes to reach full temperature.
  3. Pull the muffin tin from the oven and then pour the batter into the hot oil as fast as you can so that everything stays hot. Pouring from a large measuring cup is a good way of doing this. As the batter goes into each compartment you will see it start to fry in the hot oil. You want to fill each compartment to about a half to 2/3rds full, doing so may cause some of the oil to overflow.
  4. Once filled, put the try back in the oven for 25-30 minutes (in my oven at 450F convection they are always done in 25 minutes), after about 5 minutes you should see the Yorkies start to rise out of the tray.
  5. Do not open the oven door until they are done. Well that's what everyone says, but I've never tested it.
  6. Yorkies are at their best when fresh out of the oven, so the time to carve your roast is while the Yorkies are cooking.
  7. Oddly enough, in the rare event you have some left over, they re-heat pretty well if you put them on a pizza stone or a cast iron pan in a 325F oven for about 8-10 minutes.

Background

Off and on over the last few years I've been trying various recipes for Yorkshire Puddings, with a singular lack of success. The usual result is something that is often described as a hockey puck. I know it is perfectly possible to make a good, high rising, crispy and hollow (this is important - so it can receive the gravy and then you can cut into it and watch the gravy gush forth) Yorkie in Calgary because my Mother has done so for many years. However, Her recipe is difficult for me to repeat (of course it always works for Her).

As you may have guessed from these photos, I finally found a recipe that produced the perfect result on the first try. Partial credit to this goes to the Naked Chef (Jamie Oliver) who included it in one of his shows (where he cooked roast beef and Yorkshire Puddings). Its only partial credit as Jamie did not include all the details and I had to try out some guesses. I have converted it into metric units so that all one needs is a digital scale that weighs in about 1g steps.

Note: the photos were take with a Canon G1, using the Speedlite 420EX on bounce.


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