What really happened about the Yorkshire Pudding.

The plain truth is that we made prime rib the other night and really gave the pudding a go.

What really has happened is the batter recipe has gotten lost. I don't think it was any greatly complex or difficult batter. I asked dad for it and he came over with a folder and it wasn't there.

There is this article in Saveur I have that showcases an English New Years. Miraculously there is a rendition of yorkshire pudding similar to Grandmas in there. In the pan with the batter. The gentleman of the house in the article is an enormous fellow. I said walking around the house "Look at this guy. If I have to trust someone about Yorkshire pudding, I trust this guy!" He really is rotund and looks like a really sweet guy. His recipe doesn't involve putting the pudding under the roast for the final stages of cooking. Actually his recipe is similar to the pop over style, in that the pan is smoking hot and the batter is poured into a half cup of drippings and then its shut into the oven at 425 or so for 20 minutes, so the steam thats created in the batter can make the whole thing rise and crust. The recipe doesn't leave much room for a slowly dripping roast set above.

So I put both techniques together to see what I got.

The result was a horribly embarrassing, all around bad yorkshire pudding, with my father at the table. It was nothing like the chaste side we would eat when I was young. I can barely even describe the results it hurts so desperately inside to relive the experience. But it was so. What I had made resembled a square, grease soaked pancake. Even after apologizing about the mess a number of times, and trying to draw the families attention to the heavenly gravy I had made, my father still, in the midst of complimenting the meal, did say he was "disappointed with the yorkshire pudding". The understatement, and the way he was rubbing it in cut me deeply, and out of crippling shame I would have committed hari kari on the spot, but with my families support I got through the experience even to the point that I might attempt it again, in the short period of a couple of months.

But as great failures in the kitchen go, this was a doozy and of course all the things that went wrong have become so clearly apparent. It was his fault, this enormously fat man with whom i put my trust. He must have done one of those jobs on the recipe where someone is hanging on the telephone line, waiting to finish the article on a thread of this great cooks secret, and in the end he must of made a bad guess when he rattled something off from the top of his head. He must be a busy man. I cannot blame him. 1/2 a cup of drippings though is way to much. His ration of 1 cup of flour to one milk and # eggs, 3/4 tsp salt, is a fine batter but just doesn't have enough mass to correctly mop up the amount of drippings. And with such a smoking hot pan the whole thing cooked in seven minutes and just dried out for the rest of the time.

Grandmas was so under cooked it almost jiggled in the middle, still being crispy on the edges. I'm not too worried about the exact batter. The truth is there was one time even as a boy that I asked grandma about the pudding. She said first you make a batter. I said "a batter?' And she said, yeah, "a batter". I was really a young. I barely knew what she was talking about. But she didn't act like it was any special kind of batter. Anyway, batters are personal kinds of things. There is a good chance she didn't even go by the recipe dad had lost. Not to be sour grapes about the whole thing, but obviously I need to have some leg to stand on. If I am to carry on with this.

Maybe yorkshire pudding is something where, I just need to let go. Let it be my own. "Make it your own!" I used to say over and over to my cooks. I just need to take my own advice. Its not important this be exactly like my grandmothers. If I am going to correctly make this ephemeral, memory laden dish, it is going to have to re-created, re-built from the ground up.

There is an entirely other aspect to my prime rib, that differs from grandmas. There is a good chance that grandmas pudding had really evolved from some of these traditional techniques we see. Nothing can be assumed. I don't remember her getting the pan hot in the traditional sense of the recipes I have seen.

One of my techniques with prime rib that has nothing to do with grandmas, is the gravy making. I take some of the fatty meat that I get from frenching the bones a little bit, and chop it up finely. That with a bed of julienne onions, chopped garlic, seasoning and fresh thyme, all get placed under the rib roast. By the time the roast is done, all that crisped beef and caramelized onion and garlic are just waiting to be turned into the most gorgeous, rich red wine gravy. Here is a series of pictures getting the rib roast in the oven. Notice the nice shape of the meat and the crust of black pepper, granulated garlic and kosher salt thats on top. Thats the way prime rib should be done.

Here are rib roast shots.

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If someone wants to know more about how to make this gravy, ask. This particular post is about trying to make good yorkshire pudding.

Anyway. The next steps in this:

1. Reduce the amount of dripping for the initial pour.

2. Season batter more.

3. Consider putting some juices in the middle after the pudding is cooked mostly.

4. Much lower cooking temp after a little less hot initial pan, so the batter can catch up with itself, but not too much, but enough, but not too much, but enough…...