Real Yorkshire Pudding

Perfect Yorkshire Puddings
James Merryweather
Many years ago I had a genuine Yorkshire mother-in-law and, boy, could she cook. Every Sunday she spent hours hand beating her batter in a little bowl with a spoon. In a moment of careless bravado I suggested a whisk might be more convenient and just as effective. Her reply was restrained and polite, but I wished I'd kept my mouth shut. Ever since I didn't have a mother-in-law any more, I've striven to recreate her puddings, occasionally with acceptable results, but usually somewhere not far short of failure. It took 20 years, but on 17th October, 1999 I cracked it. I was proud. I was arrogant. My glow of success was insufferable. I strutted about the kitchen in my stripy apron, basking in the pleasure of puddings perfectly crafted. They rose fast, puffy and light, with high walls which were ideal for retaining a delicious pool of gravy.

Ingredients (enough for 2 greedy people)
3 heaped table spoons of sifted self-raising flour (mother-in-law insisted on plain)
2 large, fresh, farm eggs
pinch of salt
semi-skimmed milk to make a thick mix
water to thin after standing

Method
Put the flour in a large bowl with salt and add eggs. Mix and combine, adding milk a little at a time until as unlumpy as possible, but still reasonably stiff. Then take your electric whisk (sorry, mother-in-law) and beat the batter a lot, until it's smooth and bubbles gently break out on the surface. You want the thing full of air which it gives up reluctantly. Then let it stand at room temperature for an hour or two depending on time available. That enables the starch grains in the flour to steep and swell and the whole batter to 'blend' and 'mature'.

Take your pudding tin. You can buy a proper Yorkshire Pudding tin which is about 20 cm square with four wells. You can alternatively make lots of little ones in a bun tin or one huge one if you wish. The secret is now to be revealed. Put rather a lot of oil (3-4 mm perhaps) into each well and get it hot. In mother-in-law's day, lard or beef dripping was used, but in a modern world vegetable oil is favoured. Trying to be trendy I've used olive oil, but I think that may have been one of the reasons for failure. It doesn't get hot enough, but sunflower oil seems to work well. Put the tin on the top shelf of a very hot oven until the oil almost smokes. While that's happening, add water to the batter to thin it, and beat it thoroughly again. The consistency of the batter is hard to describe, but if you make it too thin of course it will lack the wherewithal to rise and become a decent pudding. It should perhaps be a bit thicker than a pancake batter, but over to you for trial and error. When you add the batter (about 1 cm of it) to the hot oil it should spit and bubble, not sit on the bottom of the tin sulking. Get this done quickly and the tin back into the oven. You can peep cautiously after 5-10 minutes (back door shut - no draughts) and, if you're lucky, the sides will have risen rapidly to make cup shaped puddings 10+ cm high. Cook until brown and crisp, about 20 minutes.

In old Yorkshire, when the main dish of the poor was insufficient to satisfy, puddings were served with gravy before the main meal so that the hunger had been partially satisfied by the time the meagre meat portions were served. Nowadays, it's as usual to serve the puddings with the main roast meat and veg., or even to make giant puddings (and this is a jolly good late 20th century 'tradition') as a receptacle of the whole dinner. If you make enough delicious puddings you could do both!