Luke’s Yorkshire Puddings

Hi Guys,

I was speaking to my good friend Luke the other day, moaning to him about how much hard work my return to university is turning out to be, and how I never seem to have any time to cook anymore. I miss good, home cooked food! As you can see, Luke has managed to get into the kitchen. I would kill for a Sunday roast right now, stacked high with all the trimmings and, of course, Yorkshire puds!

Luke’s Yorkies

Hi PF@H’ers. Jon’s given me the opportunity to make a return visit to PF@H following the enormously successful and popular potted duck. In fact, that’s not strictly true; I was in fact recently planning a Sunday lunch of roast beef with all the trimmings, and of course you can’t do this without Yorkshire puds.

Whilst growing up, Sunday roast was an event, something that brought the whole family together, and we often had friends and guests around too.  Now I’ve got a family of my own, it is a tradition I am keen to maintain, and so a mastery of the Yorkshire pudding is something of a must. Of course you could compromise and choose the frozen cardboard frisbees that are available these days, however part of the love that goes into the preparation of a roast, and the flavour, texture and knobbly notchy shapes you get from home made yorkshires make the extra effort well worthwhile.

This is, I admit, my first serious attempt at Yorkshire puddings. I am sure in the dim and distant past I have cooked them, however don’t really remember how they went. For some reason we rarely have beef as the roast of choice, probably as I’ve mastered the crackling on roast pork (thanks to Nigel Slater). Anyway, today we had a large joint of silverside, and I needed a recipe for Yorkshires. I turned therefore to the trusty PF@H – no self respecting book about pub food would be complete without it – and indeed it is there in the basics section at the back.

There isn’t really that much to making yorkshires; just a couple of things to make sure of, and they should come out fine: chill the batter before using, and make sure that the tin is hot before you pour the mixture in.

First the (simple) ingredients: Flour, eggs, milk and some salt

Mix together in a blender

Then chill for an hour or so. Once you’re ready to cook, get your oven nice and hot, and put your Yorkshire (muffin) tin in with a little oil (or preferably beef dripping) in each mould. Once it’s very hot too, take it out the oven and pour in the batter, about 3/4 full in each mould.

Pop it back in the oven for about 25 minutes. During the cooking they should rise nicely:

Try to resist the urge to open the oven…

And the finished articles should look something like this:

They were of course served with the roast beef, roast potatoes and veg, with a good dollop of horseradish. Oh, and a Californian red. I was pleased with the outcome; they rose nicely, were fluffy and light and maintained their shape well when they were removed from the oven. Next time however, I would probably go a little heavier on the salt (close your ears doc!) maybe a teaspoon instead of the 1/2 tsp I put in.

I’ll look forward to reading Jon’s blog post on the roast beef when it arrives too!

Bye for now,

Luke.