Yorkshire Pudding Popovers

Yorkshire pudding is a side dish traditionally served with Prime Rib. It’s made with flour, eggs, milk, salt and fat rendered from the roast. It’s sometimes made in the roasting pan and then cut into individual pieces, but more often made in a popover pan or in custard cups.  When you substitute butter for the beef fat, you end up with a less savory version called a popover.

Either way, when baked, the batter puffs up dramatically, and becomes crispy on the outside, but hollow and moist and custardy on the inside. In short, they are delicious!

If you use butter in your recipe, it’s important to clarify it beforehand to prevent it from smoking due to the high baking temperature. Alternatively, you could just purchase ghee at your natural foods store or a store that specializes in Indian cooking. Ghee is similar to clarified butter except that it has been cooked longer so it has a deeper flavor. To clarify butter yourself, heat a cube of unsalted butter over low heat. Continue to simmer gently until the foaming has stopped and all of the milk solids have risen to the top, then carefully skim them off with a spoon. (Don’t let the butter brown!) It’s not entirely necessary, but to remove as much of the milk solids as possible, you could at this point pour the butter through a cheesecloth-lined sieve, discarding the solids and reserving the clear melted butter. Any clarified butter you have leftover will keep for 3-6 months in the refrigerator, so you may want to do a larger amount so you will have it available. It’s so good for quick frying fish or adding deep richness to vegetables.

I prefer making individual puddings/popovers to the roasting pan version mostly because the individual ones maintain their height better than cut pieces, which will fall before you get them to the table. Not having a popover pan is not a problem, as a regular muffin tin will work fine.

If you are serving these with a Prime Rib roast, plan on making them after the roast is cooked and is resting before carving. These must be served as soon as they come out of the oven, so carve your roast and get everything else on the table while the popovers are baking.

Ingredients:

3 eggs + 1 additional egg white, all at room temperature
¾ cup almond milk, at room temperature
¾ cup cream, at room temperature
1 teaspoon kosher salt or 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
3 tablespoons clarified butter or ghee, melted
2 tablespoons coconut flour, sifted
¼ cup almond flour, packed (Honeyville Farms works best for these)
1 cup tapioca flour

It’s very important to have all ingredients at room temperature before beginning.

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 450°.

Sift the coconut flour through a sieve into a small bowl. Add almond flour, tapioca flour and salt and whisk together to combine.

Place the eggs and egg white into a blender container and blend on medium-low speed until very light in color and somewhat thickened, about 2 minutes. Add almond milk and cream and blend to combine. Remove lid and pour in the dry ingredients. Blend again until thoroughly combined, turning the machine off and scraping down the sides of the container with a rubber spatula once or twice. Add one tablespoon of the melted butter or ghee and blend one more time to combine.

Pour about ½ teaspoon of melted butter or ghee into the bottom of each cup in a standard 12-cup muffin tin. Place the muffin pan into the hot oven for 3 minutes.

Remove the pan from the oven, quickly closing the oven door so as not to allow the heat to escape, and fill each cup with batter about 2/3 of the way full. Return the filled muffin pan to the hot oven on the middle rack, and set a timer for 20 minutes.

DO NOT OPEN THE OVEN AT ANY TIME DURING BAKING OR YOUR POPOVERS WILL FALL/DEFLATE!

After 20 minutes, reduce heat to 350° and reset timer for an additional 10 minutes. When puddings/popovers come out of oven, pierce each one with the tip of a knife or a skewer to allow the steam to release. Serve immediately.