ChefSteps

Oven

12-well Muffin pan

Mixing bowl

Sifter

Breville Super Q™

Whisk

Digital scale

1/2 Sheet pan(s)

Popover pan

Egg(s)

Milk

Bread flour

Salt

Grapeseed oil

Gather all your equipment and ingredients. 

Make sure the the eggs and milk are at room temperature. 

Weigh all the ingredients and set them aside.

Get it all together

In order to make great popovers, you have to use an oil that has a high smoke point. That is why we chose to use grapeseed oil, which has a smoke point of [f 421]. 

When you make popovers, getting that pan and oil sizzling hot is essential to create popovers that pop up. Cold oil? No puff. However, if you heat an oil so hot that it starts smoking, you have gone too far. When fats start to smoke, they release an unsaturated aldehyde called acrolein. The word comes from the Latin root acer, which means sharp end. That’s why acrolein produces acrid-tasting food. You don’t want bitter, unpleasantly pungent popovers, right? So, choose a fat with a high smoke point. 

Traditionally, Yorkshire puddings—the original dish that inspired popovers in America—are batter cooked in beef tallow. (Some of the original recipes called for cooking the batter in the beef drippings left over after roasting a joint of beef for a Sunday meal.) If you want to make traditional Yorkshire pudding, use beef fat. Since tallow has a smoke point of [f 400], heat the pan in the oven first, then add the fat when the pain is searing hot and return it to the oven to heat the fat. When the fat is hot, pour the batter in the pan and bake.

What kind of fat works best?

Put a rack in the oven in the second slot up from the bottom.

Preheat the oven to [f 450].

Preheat the oven

Whisk the eggs in a mixing bowl until they are fluffy and have doubled in volume. Whisk in the milk and the salt. 

Sift the flour into the batter and mix until you have a smooth batter. Use a silicone spatula and stir everything together gently. The batter should be thin enough to pour easily, like a fluid, not quite as thin as crepe batter, not quite as thick as pancake batter. 

You can also make a smooth batter in the blender. Whip the eggs in the blender first. Then, pour in the milk and add the salt. Finally, add in the flour and scrape down the sides of the blender. Blend again. Blending can be aggressive and it is easy to over-mix the flour this way. Keep the blender on a low speed.

Rest that batter. Resting the batter after mixing will improve the baking spring, so mix it all up and let the batter take a break. Leave the batter on the countertop for 1 hour. Do not refrigerate it. 

However, if you want to make life easier for yourself, make the batter and put it in the refrigerator overnight. Pull out the batter 2 hours before baking. (You can also dip it in a lukewarm water bath to speed up the warming.) You do not want to work with a cold batter.

Large egg(s)

Whole milk

Make the batter

Grab your muffin pan. Pour the grapeseed oil into the 3 cavities closest to your non-dominant hand, filling those 3 cavities about 2/3 full. Tilt the pan downward and let the oil run down into the other cavities, filling each one evenly. Set the muffin pan on a half-sheet tray, to catch any oil that spills over the edges of the pan. 

If you are using a popover pan, fill each cavity about 20% full with oil. 

The heavier the muffin pan, the longer it will take to preheat. This may take 10 minutes or 20 minutes, depending on the density of your pan.

Prepare the muffin pan

Remove the muffin pan from the oven and quickly pour the batter into each of the pan’s cavities. Fill the cavities almost full. To keep the muffin pan clean when pouring in the batter, use a spoon to catch any drips. Work fast. You do not want that pan to cool too much. 

Once the muffin pan is filled, carefully put it back into the oven. Bake at [f 450] until the popovers are puffed high and golden brown all around, about 20 minutes. 

Keep the oven door closed while the popovers are baking for the maximum puffage.

Remove the muffin (or popover) pan from the oven and let the popovers cool for a few moments before removing them from the pan.

Fill the muffin cavities and bake

You can try different fats to add unexpected flavor to the popovers. Try clarified butter, ghee, duck fat, leaf lard, peanut oil, or butter. Just mind the smoke point of each fat and heat that fat in the pan appropriately. 

You can also enhance the flavor of the popover batter by adding in fresh herbs, Parmesan and black pepper, dried mushroom powder, or freshly chopped truffles. 

While the popovers are baking, make some gravy and tell everyone to dip and enjoy. 

Also, a smear of good butter over a hot popover is one of the delights of the world.

Keep it traditional or let those creative juices flow

[fetchActivity flavor-packed-feast-worthy-chuck-roast][fetchActivity roast-beef-silverside][fetchActivity classic-oven-roasted-standing-rib-roast][fetchActivity perfect-every-time-center-cut-tenderloin-roast]

If you have never made popovers before, you’re missing out on something quite extraordinary. They puff up like a blousy dress blown up by the wind. The crust is crisp, with a snap on the teeth. The inside is soft, almost creamy, like custard. These are savory Sunday roast and rich gravy food. Popovers came across the ocean with British citizens settling into the new America. No one knows when Yorkshire puddings—a batter of milk, eggs, and flour—were first puffed up in an oven. However, the first mention of them in a British cookbook is 1747. Traditionally, Yorkshire puddings were cooked in beef fat, the drippings from the roast made for the family. (It’s hard to remember now, but beef used to be truly expensive, so making starchy, custardy bread rolls filled out the meal so people didn’t eat as much meat.) When people began making them in America, they changed the recipe based on the ingredients they had at hand. By 1876, popovers were showing up in American cookbooks. Now, we can use any fat we want to make these custardy creations. These really are a bit of magic. When you make a thin popover batter—not quite as thin as crepes or as thick as pancake batter—in the oven, the eggs in the batter coagulate and release steam, which pushes the batter upward, like a soufflé. At the same time, the proteins in the batter—from eggs, milk, and flour—brown as they hit the edge of the hot pan and the air in the oven. It’s the same Maillard reaction that browns a steak in a hot skillet. So the final popover has a hollow custardy center—perfect for dipping into gravy or filling with meat—and a crisp crust. Popovers fit into the category of our favorite kind of food: they take little time to make, you can put together the batter the day before the dinner you want to make, and the final result is truly impressive.You’re going to make people happy with popovers.

Light, Crispy Popovers