I’m not impressed by my Yorkshire Puddings…

 Why would I be? I make them regularly. Having said that, I’m regularly disappointed by other people’s Yorkshire Puddings.

Often, people seem to take their cooking skills, or the lack thereof, for granted.

I cannot tell you how often people have been hugely impressed by the Yorkshires, which to me are simply my Yorkshires. My guests have expressed wonder at their size, their lightness, their crispness; to some, they appear to be the quintessence of Pudding.

When this happens, and it happens regularly, I simply pass on my Yorkshires recipe, which is hardly a recipe at all.

I’ve been making these puddings my entire adult life. I know not from whom I got the recipe, although I’m confident it was an older woman of my acquaintance when I was still very young.

My Yorkshires were being discussed in the week running up to Christmas. I was visiting my favourite boutique with the husband, and food became a topic of conversation. The shop is family owned and run, and the son is a friend of ours who has partaken of my puddings. He eulogised them to his father. The son has the recipe, but hasn’t used it yet.

I gave the recipe to the father. He is a grown man, distinguished by his snow-white hair and beard, and his fabulous grooming. I’m told that he’s also a very good cook. On the strength of his son’s recommendation, this lovely man used my Pudding recipe to accompany his seasonal meal… And later proclaimed that it had made his Christmas.

I feel that this is a grand claim, but it delights me that something so simple as a reliable Yorkshire Pudding recipe could revolutionise anyone’s Sunday or celebration lunch.

I’m not going to urge anyone to reproduce my Yorkshires, but I can tell you that this recipe is utterly foolproof; I sometimes wonder why there is more than one pudding recipe on the planet… I can only presume it’s because this kind of cooking is about family recipes and good instincts, and those things get handed on. I’m handing on this recipe, and for those of you who try it, I hope you enjoy the results.

Take a small vessel… I use my favourite tumbler.
Fill it first with plain flour
Fill it again with milk
Fill it, once more, with eggs

Whisk these ingredients with a good pinch of salt, and, if you like it, a dash of English mustard powder. I do this early in the day and let the batter sit.

Pour the batter into very hot pans with a good slosh of oil, lard or dripping in them.

Bake in a hot oven for anything up to half an hour.

A note of warning: If you put the shelf too high up in the oven, your Yorkshires, or at least mine, will stick to the oven’s ceiling. Smiles.

We like Yorkshire Puddings so much that we don’t just serve them with beef, we serve them with any roast dinner we happening to be making.

my latest batch of Yorkshire Puddings