Yorkshire Pudding

Being an American, I'd never eaten Yorkshire Pudding until I went to Rhodesia.  There, I tasted and learned to like a lot of traditional English foods, since I was invited to dinner by many of the Brits in the former English colony.  Along the way, I developed a taste for a lot of those dishes, not to mention they bring back a lot of memories for me when I prepare them now.

Yorkshire Pudding isn't very exciting, to say the least, but it's nice to serve something a bit different now and then and it's easy to make!  You might consider it as an occasional option to dinner rolls on the table, especially when served with beef.

If you would like to serve a bit of history with your Yorkshire Pudding, here's what was explained to me.  Beef was quite expensive to serve in Britain, long ago.  Tradition was to serve roast beef on Sunday as a treat for the week. (By the way, nothing was wasted.  The tradition seemed to be to use the leftover roast on Monday, served in dish of beef curry.  I'll get to my beef curry recipe a bit later on!)  Anyway, in an effort to stretch the beef roast a little further, Yorkshire Pudding would also be served with Sunday dinner.  The idea was that guests would eat the Yorkshire Pudding...helping to satisfy their hunger and they wouldn't eat as much of the roast beef!  Okay...let's get on to making this simple dish!!

INGREDIENTS

3 eggs
1 cup milk
1 cup all purpose flour
2 tablespoons butter (Don't go cheap!  Use REAL butter!)
1 Muffin tin
(NOTE: Often the grease drippings from the beef were used in place of butter)

(NOTE: I modify the Yorkshire Pudding to my own taste, making it a bit sweet.  Not exactly traditional, but I add 2 tablespoons of granulated sugar).

Begin by pre-heating the oven to 375F.  This is a VERY IMPORTANT step!

In a bowl, beat the 3 eggs and milk, along with the sugar, if you decide to try my variation.  Now, stir in the flour and mix well.  Set the bowl aside and prepare your muffin tin.   Put 1/2 teaspoon of butter in each muffin tin cup.

Now, a VERY IMPORTANT STEP, if you want good Yorkshire Pudding!!!  Put the muffin tin in the pre-heated oven to melt the butter.  This will take between 2 and 5 minutes.  The muffin tin MUST be very hot!!!  This is essential in making nice, fluffy Yorkshire Pudding!!!

Quickly, while the muffin tin is very hot, divide the batter in the bowl between all the muffin cups.  There won't be much batter in each cup, but that's fine.  Yorkshire Pudding will GROW and pop up well above the tops of the muffin tin cups!

Put the muffin tin, with the batter, back into the pre-heated oven for 5 minutes.  After 5 minutes, reduce the oven temperature to 350F.  Continue to bake for 25 minutes.  Take the muffin tin out of the oven and the Yorkshire Pudding will be light and fluffy, looking much like "popovers" when they come out of the oven.  They should be golden brown on top.  As they start to cool, they will sink back down some in the cups, but that's how it should be.  Don't worry about it!

Pop the Yorkshire Pudding out of the muffin tin and serve hot with a roast beef dinner!

Simple as that!!  Enjoy something a little different with dinner.

If you have questions, please feel free to email me at: stan.kain@gmail.com