Smart Wife’s Perfect Yorkshire pudding recipe
Posted by Fiona Nevile in Vegetables and Sides | 90 comments
Successful individual yorkshire puddings made in a fairy cake tray
We now have an even better recipe for Yorkshire puddings – these are crisp and keep their shape.
Years ago Smart Wife taught me how to make perfect Yorkshire puddings. I often ruined the joint but our individual Yorkshire puds were perfect every time. Rising like a miniature Tower Of Pisa army, they happily deflected attention away from the teeth challenging meat.
On Sunday, Danny suddenly gets serious at around six o’clock and puts on his King Of Roasts mantle. If he is cooking beef I am invited to be his Queen Of Yorkshire Puds.
There are three key tips:
1. Make individual puds – I use an individual cake/bun/mince pie tray- they rise far higher and tend to keep their shape better than one big baking tray.
2. Make sure that the oil in the pans is smoking before you add the batter.
3. Only use plain white flour.
This Sunday I used a bread making flour – white with the goodness of added grains. Big mistake!
Rather than the usual five inch high puds we got the three inch hovels that you can see in the photo. They flattened as I waved a camera at them. They tasted fine but didn’t have so much hanger appeal.
N.B. December 2 2007: I have experimented with this recipe and had great results using a heavier dish.
Smart Wife’s Perfect Yorkshire pudding recipe feeds 4 or 2 greedy people like D and me – they’re great cold with a slice of ham for breakfast)
| Smart Wife’s Perfect Yorkshire pudding recipe |
- 110g of plain white flour
- 2 medium eggs
- 300ml of chilled milk (we use semi skimmed and I think that Smart Wife probably used full cream)
- 2-3 tablespoonfuls of olive oil/ beef dripping/rape seed oil
- Large pinch of salt
- Sift the plain flour into a bowl. Add the salt.
- Make a well in the centre and break in the two eggs. Gently whisk the eggs into the flour and gradually add the milk. I now use my stick blender to do this and it gives a much better result. Ideally, return the mixture to the fridge in a jug for half an hour to chill. If you don’t have time for that the puds will be fine, just won’t rise quite as much.
- Put a little oil (about 0.5 tsp) in eight wells in the cake tin and put on the top shelf of a preheated oven 220c (200c fan) for ten minutes.
- Quickly whisk your batter and pour onto the hot, smoking oil in the wells in the cake tin. The oil should bubble up around the batter. Speed counts.
- Bake at the top of the oven for 20 minutes, turning the tray around after ten minutes.
- Time the puds to be ready when the joint is just about to be carved so you will serve them at their crispest and best.
Leave a reply
Hi Ellie
Funnily enough, European cooks are exactly the opposite! Any serious cook has a set of kitchen scales. They are not expensive and are invaluable for baking. The reason we wouldn’t say half a cup is because few of us have cup measures — we just don’t use them.
Actually, I hate recipes that use cups 🙂 Expecially when I’m instructed to add “a cup of butter”. I now have a set of cup measures, but I find them really awkward, probably because I’m not used to them, and always start by converting everything to weights in grams. I use this site for conversions:
http://www.dianasdesserts.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/tools.measures/Measures.cfm
PS 110 g is 4 oz. Unlike cups, I can do common metric to omperial conversions in my head easily!
I really dislike ingredients like 110 g of flour.
Why wouldn’t you say 1/2 a cup? (Actually it’s 0.478 cups) Everyone has a cup measure but I don’t know anyone in my circle of friends that has a gram scale.
Hello Ian
These are great but have you tried these? All you need is a cast iron skillet https://www.cottagesmallholder.com/?p=523
Thanks so much for droping by and leving a comment!
How can anything so simple have such great results! Tried it for the first time yesterday fantastic puds the result.
Having tried numerous recipes over the years and turning out Yorkshires that look more like frisbees than anything remotely edible I decided to try your recipe and WOW!!! they were flipping fantastic! My family were convinced that I had bought frozen ones until I made them again the very next day ( at the request of my son)..so THANK YOU! I am now a bloody marvellous yorkshire pudding maker….( and about time too considering I come from York hahaha)
They were delicious, enjoyed by both me and the husband…and the 16 month old boy! And they were HUGE! I think they’ll be my pic for today on my Project 365 blog :o)
I’m trying these now (although have had to substitute the milk for 1/2 and 1/2 soya milk and water)…fingers crossed!
I have tried every single yorkshire pudding recipe going and always turned out frisbees!!! I tried this recipe and WOW they were bloody amazing!.I am chuffed to mintballs and will always be making my yorkshires this way in future so THANK YOU
Hi, I just had to say thanks for this recipe. I googled ‘perfect yorkshires’ and found your site. My yorkshires often don’t rise much but these were amazing. I actually jumped up and down when I opened the oven!
They were made with eggs from our own hens too, which made them even better.
best wishes,
Julie
So many thanks for this guide. I used it on Christmas day for my yorkshire pud’s and they rose!
Here is a photo of the dinner: http://flickr.com/photos/alexrichards/3136266614/