In 2012, T-Mobile polled Brits about their favourite things about the country. The bacon butty came out on top, followed by roast dinners, tea (obviously), history, and the BBC. Then, just a few places later, at number 10, came Yorkshire Puddings.
Some believe that only a “true Yorkshireman” can make a proper Yorkshire pudding, whereas others believe that it should be one massive pudding cut into individual squares. Even the Royal Society of Chemists has prescribed the ideal measurements for the perfect pudding. And even worse, Americans seem to think that Yorkshire puddings are pancakes. (To be fair, I’d eat my Yorkshire puddings with peanut butter).
So let’s just forget all those rules for a moment.
What about a Yorkshire pudding recipe that is lower in calories, vegetarian-friendly, more nutritious, and still delicious?
It sounds impossible, but I think I’ve done it. Over the past few weeks, I’ve made over 200 puddings, trying to figure out the best recipe. I’ve experimented with the milk, the flour, the hydration, the fats. I’ve taken advice from everyone, from the bloke down the local pub to Michelin-star chefs. I’ve made tall puddings, short puddings, and anything else you could imagine.
At any rate, standing atop this mountain of 200 Yorkshire puddings, I’ve got two recipes for you:
- The traditional perfect Yorkshire pudding.
- A slightly healthier, more nutritious version.
Before we have a look at the specific recipes, let’s have a little look at the kind of general overview professionals and home cooks alike pretty much all follow.
The same process:
- You whisk up a batter of equal parts egg white, flour, and milk.
- You take that batter and you’ve got to let it rest overnight in the fridge. As the batter rests overnight, the proteins and the starches break down. This process will occur naturally during cooking anyway, but this will give it a head start. Then, when you actually come to cook it, they’ll be more tasty and crispier. As food writer J Kenji Lopez Alt says, “resting the dough is pretty much the single most important step you can take to improving your Yorkshire puddings”.
- The next day, while you preheat the oven, you take the batter out, let it come to room temperature, and you preheat the actual muffin tray inside the oven so that it’s hot when you put the batter in.
- When the tray is relatively hot, you take it out and you put your fat into each of the slots, and then you put that back in the oven so that the fat is ripping hot when you add the batter.
- After about 10 minutes, you take the tray out, add the batter, and bake for 12 minutes until the puddings are crispy, brown, and tall.
And that’s all there is to it: five easy steps.
So let’s put them into practice with this regular traditional Yorkshire pudding recipe.
Traditional Yorkshire pudding recipe
Traditional Yorkshire pudding ingredients
Makes: 12 Yorkshire puddings
- 2 large eggs (approx. 120g)
- 120g white flour
- 120g milk
- Salt
Traditional Yorkshire pudding directions
- To make a batter, we’re going to weigh out two large eggs.
- For these traditional Yorkshire puddings, we want equal volumes of flour, milk, and egg. So if there are 120 grams of egg, weigh out 120 grams of white flour. But if you’ve only got 100 grams of egg, you can either weigh out 100 grams of flour and have smaller puddings or crack another egg and put a little bit of that in so that you’ve got about 120 grams.
- And then do the same for a half-and-half mixture of milk, ideally whole milk, and water. So that means if you’ve got 120 grams of egg, then you want 60 grams of milk and 60 grams of water.
- Add a big pinch of salt and whisk it all to combine everythng.
- The next day, when you’re ready to devour some puddings, take the batter out of the fridge, let it come to room temperature, and pre-heat the oven to 230oC/450oF (or 200oC/400oF if using convection).
- Make sure the muffin tray is inside the oven as it’s preheating.
- Once that’s preheated, spray each muffin tray with about five calories of the low-calorie cooking spray and put it back in the oven for 10 minutes.
- After 10 minutes, split the batter between the 12 slots, spray each slot with three sprays of the cooking spray, and put it back in the oven.
- Cook that for 14 minutes or until they’re crisp and tall.
Those taste unreal! The ghee adds a flavour that’s kind of reminiscent of a fish ‘n’ chip shop. Obviously, it’s different from the traditional taste of the rendered beef fat (or, beef dripping, as we call it in the UK), but to be honest, I prefer it. Please, please forgive me, Royal Society of Chemists.
You’ve probably noticed a few ropy ingredients in there – in other words, foodstuffs that are delicious but also dense in calories and not necessarily the most nutritious options. So, how can we make our puddings healthier?
Well, after dozens and dozens of experiments, I found the four best things to change.
First, the flour. So, swapping out 50% of the white flour for wholemeal or spelt flour reduces the overall calories and adds more fibre.
The second thing to change is the milk – swapping out whole milk for semi-skimmed milk reduces the calories and actually leads to taller puddings.
The third thing to change is the hydration – with the traditional recipe that we just ran through, we’re using equal parts flour, milk, and egg. That means that with the egg and the milk, we have a 200% hydration because 200% of the ingredients are liquid. But by reducing that flour content, it not only reduces the calories but makes the puddings taller.
If we want to reduce the calories, we can just lower the hydration by adding less flour. It not only reduces the calories but actually makes the puddings taller, so it’s another win-win. So, instead of that 200% base recipe hydration, we’ll go for a hydration of 266%. In practice, that means for every 90 grams of flour, we add 120 grams of egg, 60 grams of water, and 60 grams of semi-skimmed milk.
The fourth and final variable is the fat. The fat is the main source of calories in this dish. But by swapping out the ghee for one of these low-calorie cooking sprays, we almost cut down the calories by a third. Obviously, this goes without saying, but this massively impacts the taste, the rise, and the crispiness.
At any rate, let’s put it all together in a healthy Yorkshire pudding recipe.
Healthy Yorkshire pudding recipe
Healthy Yorkshire pudding ingredients
Makes: 12 Yorkshire puddings
- 2 large eggs (approx. 120g)
- 45g white flour
- 45g spelt/wholemeal flour
- 60g semi-skimmed milk
- 60g water
- Salt
Healthy Yorkshire pudding directions
- So first, let’s make a batter: crack open two eggs (about 120 grams).
- Then, we have equal parts white flour and spelt or wholemeal flour relative to three quarters of the egg’s weight. So, if you have 120 grams of egg, you’re going to want 90 grams of flour – that’s 45 grams of wholemeal or spelt flour and 45 grams of white flour.
- Then, add 60 grams of semi-skimmed milk and 60 grams of water.
- Add a generous pinch of salt and whisk it up until combined.
- Again, leave the batter in the fridge overnight.
- The next day, preheat the oven to pre-heat the oven to 230oC/450oF (or 200oC/400oF if using convection) with the muffin tray inside, as the butter comes to room temperature.
- Once that’s preheated, spray each muffin tray with about five calories of the low-calorie cooking spray and put it back in the oven for 10 minutes.
- After 10 minutes, split the batter between the 12 slots, spray each slot with three sprays of the cooking spray, and put it back in the oven.
- Cook them for 14 minutes or until they’re crispy and browned.
- When you think they’re ready, which is typically around 14 minutes, take them out and let them rest.
Does this Yorkshire pudding recipe yield results as good as the traditional Yorkshire pudding recipe? No, of course not.
There’s a reason we slather all our food in ghee, butter, or oil. It just tastes good. It tastes better. If you want a lower-calorie pudding, you’ve got to accept that the taste is going to change. It’s comparable, it’s decent, but it’s not as good.
I do think, though, this is the closest you’re going to get to the original. In the future, when I’m making them, what I’ll do is reduce the hydration, swap out the milk, swap out the flours, but I’ll be keeping the ghee. I think that fat is essential, and the lower-calorie cooking spray is just too tasteless for me.
Anyway, after cooking over 200 Yorkshire puddings, I mus admit, I’m absolutely sick to death of Yorkshire puddings. I don’t think I’m going to be able to look at another one for a long time. But, I hope you do.
