Making Yorkshire Pudding is easier and quicker than buying pre-made. It is also yields incomparably better puddings- like the difference between freshly fried and microwave chips, instant and fresh coffee, or a nice bottle of Laphroaig and that cleaning stuff I get from the garage down the road when I am really desperate. As with pork crackling recipes, I have noticed there is a lot of useless methodology circulated by otherwise perfectly respectable chefs and food writers. And again, as with pork crackling, I have endeavoured to boil off the nonsense and reduce the watery stock of fable down to a poignant syrup of practical advice.

QUICK SUMMARY RECIPE FOR IMPATIENT BROWSERS:

1. Make batter:      A. Put some plain flour in a bowl (no point measuring – see below)      B. Crack in an egg, and whisk to a smooth stiff paste- preferably no thinner than thick porridge. If it is too dry, add more egg (and then flour), if it is too runny, just add more flour     C. Whisk in milk until the batter is the consistency of double cream
2.  Get metal receptacle for your pudding (the shape affects the manner in which the pudding will rise). Does not need preheating  or anything like that, despite what you may have heard (see below)
3.  Add oil (roasting fat is best but not vital) to cooking receptacle. Again, despite popular myths, no preheating is required (see below). Add more oil than you think- the batter needs to be covered. At least 1 cm deep oil is a good guide
4.  Pour batter into tin / receptacle. It is best to pour into centre of oil. Do not pour in too much: the batter should be floating in a coat of oil like a big yolk in albumin
5. Place in a 200˚C oven. Do not open the door until puddings have puffed and set- they will go a light brown on top where the oven is hottest. Should take 15-20 minutes

 

Common Problems:

puddings rise fast but then collapse quickly

- Use a higher proportion of egg in the batter. Egg makes it hold.

- The oven is too hot: the pudding rises too fast and it wont cook through before they start to burn. The heat needs time to penetrate to the cooler centre of the batter while not burning the outside. Reduce the heat (next time)

Pudding is too crunchy, even chalky, or a wee bit plasticky

- Use a lower proportion of egg / higher proportion of milk in the batter

-You are eating a poor quality toy, not your Yorkshire pudding

 

On quantities:

Don’t bother weighing the flour. After a couple of times you will know roughly how much to use. The final consistency of the batter is all that matters, and that is determined by the amount of milk you add. This can only be done by feel- trying to measure the milk according to some recipe is only going to leave the end result to chance.

The amount of flour you use really only determines how much wastage you have at the end. This is only worth worrying about when you have got the technique down. Although I hate food wastage In general, I see it as something of a necessary evil when learning and practising. It is only a little dairy down the drain for the minute.

Determining the amount of flour is like choosing the size of a canvas before you start painting. Maybe.

Okay, if you want me to be specific, start with a mug full of flour. Or a small mango sized heap. God, just put some flour in a bowl, you’ll get the hang of it.

On texture:

The proportion of egg you use affects how much the pudding rises and how solid it is at the end of cooking.

Why not use all egg then? The puddings would be massive and light!

Well the problem is that the puddings will become too hard and chalky, and the flavour is not as nice – I think it should have an element of creamy pancake to it. Using milk to thin the mixture from paste to batter imparts just enough flavour and softens the texture, but not enough to make the puds collapse too easily.

On your tin / receptacle:

Some people like lots of little puddings, some like one big one. In my experience it is determined by whatever is to hand. Obviously it is easier to divide lots of individual puddings between lots of people, and the texture will be more uniform due to the lower ratio of volume to surface area, allowing more consistent heat penetration and less difference between cooking times of surface and centre. however, it can be nice to do massive Yorkshires. Why not serve all your roast beef and veg and gravy in one massive mediaeval pudding? Or a Sunday roast wrap, rolled up in a big Yorkshire pudding? Maybe thats going a little too far…

Inevitably the centre of these big ones wont be as uniformly crisp as with smaller ones, but I quite like having that pancake texture in the middle.

Non-stick and non-non-stick: no difference due to the amount of oil you should be using. However, non-stick surfaces can be useful for cleaning off those inevitable burnt on drips from your ladle…

You can try different vessels for different effects. For example, here is a quick Yorkshire made in a blini pan:

Essentially you will find that the initial profile of the batter in the vessel will determine how the pudding expands. Imagine it like first of all setting a balloon which you then inflate.

On Pre-heating:

EVERY recipe I have ever seen insists on preheating the tin and oil, probably till smoking or sizzling or something.

I have never found this to make a difference at all. My Yorkshires always rise and cook perfectly without pre-heating. The idea, I suppose is that the oil is supposed to seal the batter which then expands like a balloon.

But batter does not mix with the oil, unless you give it a stir. Metal and oil heat up very quickly and are closer to the source of heat, so there will be a thermal differential due to the physical nature of the cooking apparatus.

On timing:

If your oven is at the right temperature, then Yorkshire puddings will cook in a about 15-20mins, in my experience. Mind, different ovens behave differently which can affect cooking time. This can depend on factors like shape and air circulation.

As you will want to serve the puddings fresh from the oven, it is a good idea to put them in just when your roast has been taken out to rest. Remember it is hotter at the top shelf. Don’t put them too high in the oven or when they rise they’ll squash against the top, of course.

On general method:

Blindly following a tight recipe will rarely work, unless you get lucky. Cooking is not like assembling flat pack furniture (thank God). There are all sorts of factors which vary – the size of eggs, ambient temperatures etc.). It is a good idea to have at least a bit of a grasp of what is going on so you can adapt.

The success of a Yorkshire pudding batter is dependent upon its consistency. It can take quite subtle adjustments to get it right, bet when you know what you are looking for it will be easy. Experiment, and learn from mistakes is my motto.

Update: check out my new Yorkshire Pudding recipe/method/analysis here

Roast pork without good crackling is like a garden without any trees, a car without hub-caps, a jester without any bells, a farm without any dung, or a young vagabond without a twinkle in his rapscallious eye. It is missing its joy. There is something about the crisp, salty, melt-in-your mouth goodness of crackling that brings joy to the iciest of hearts.

People always seem to want to know how to get a good crackle, and there are a few common advices offered by various chefs and food writers. They variously suggest rubbing with oil, rubbing with salt, with herbs, scalding with boiling water, scoring and so on. But I have never seen any writer offer an explanation of why pigskin crackles, and how any of the standard methods actually help.

This post is my explanation of the processes involved in making crackling. As with the vast majority of culinary methods of which I know, if you just follow instructions and recipes without really thinking about what is actually happening to the ingredients then you will have little success.

It is perfectly possible to employ all the methods mentioned above and not get a good crackling. If you have found yourself frequently frustrated, left with a tough leathery bit of football I would suggest that you try the following: run a blow torch over it. Voila! It will sizzle and puff up into light crisp balloons of crackling. It is not the best, mind you: it will be patchy and uneven. But the blowtorch just illustrates that there is no magic involved. It is heat that is the critical factor.

Think of bacon turning crispy. When you fry or grill it for long enough, it will go as crunchy as a poppadum. Water is driven out, and fat soaks in, cooking the pork cells brittle. Blowtorching the skin is essentially doing the same thing as frying bacon. There is fat underneath which melts and cooks the skin, replacing the water which is driven out.

When moisture is trapped in or under the skin, fat can not usurp its place. Scoring the rind allows the moisture to escape and the fat to melt out and all over the skin, just like bacon in a frying pan. As sharp a blade as possible, even a scalpel is good. But don’t cut all the way down through the fat to the flesh, because this can allow juices to bubble out, ruining the meat and the crackling.

I have seen one well-known chef recommend pouring boiling water over the skin before oiling, salting, and cooking. This will not help. I imagine that the chef borrowed the step from traditional Peking duck preparation, where the skin is scalded first to tighten it and to remove any fat on the surface of the skin. This is important because the ducks are left to hang in a draughty window or doorway (Chinatown stylee) for a day to completely desiccate the skin, and residual oil would prevent the water leaving it. Chinese chefs take care not to pierce the skin so no fat can get through and spoil it. When Peking duck is done in authentic Beijing style, the skin is served first with pancakes – it is a fine delicacy. The rest of the duck meat is dished up in a subsequent course.

Anyway, the scalding is pretty much useless in the above chef’s recipe because the pork joint is not left to dry for any length of time, and oil is poured straight back on to the skin!

Salting- it seems like a good idea. Salting things dries them out, of course. Well, salting dries out food without having to cook it, more specifically. If the water is free to escape, then the heat from the cooking will be far more effective at drying the skin than salting. However, the mixture of excessive fat and salt is a combination you are genetically predisposed to adore. Great for your heart, too.

Heat is everything. If you keep the oven low you will not get crackling. If you turn it up very hot then you run the risk of drying your perfectly juicy pork (and there is no greater sin than dried-out pork, not even usury). Pork does not like to be cooked roughly. It makes sense to remove the rind, fat and skin, when the joint has finished cooking and put it back in a very hot oven You can even use the grill. Incidentally, I always wrap roasted meat in foil to rest. If you merely cover it, it will lose a lot more juice and juiciness. If grilling the crackling, take care not to let it burn, all can be lost in a matter of seconds (this nearly happened to me the other day).

Last but not least we come to the cut of meat itself. A good layer of fat really helps get the crackling sizzling, and also show that the pig has been fed well. You should only use good quality, free-range pork. Factory-farmed pork always has a terrible, unwholesome reek to it, and sweats all sorts of weird muck. I found out from a farmer that this curdled grey crap is actually milk: there are government regulations governing how much water may be pumped into standard non free-range meat, so the factory technicians use milk as well, which has not been regulated yet.

So, if you want a vague recipe, score the skin shallowly (experiment with using a lot of scores) rub in some salt for flavouring. Use a high heat (above 220C) to crackle the pork, preferably off the joint after cooking. Oil may help to keep salt on, and make up for a lack of fat, but if there is enough blubber underneath the skin then that should do.

But the only way to get reliably good crackling is to experiment, trying to get a feel for the cooking process. Every oven and every piece of pork is different, and your method will have to adapt accordingly.