Yorkshire pudding started life as a dripping pudding. The batter sat in a tin beneath the spit-roasting joint and caught the beef fat as it fell, puffing up enormous and crisp. It was eaten first, with gravy, to take the edge off the appetite before the meat arrived.
Cook it, then count it
Most modern recipes now reach for sunflower or rapeseed oil, and the pudding comes out flatter, paler, and sadder. The physics tells you why: dripping smokes hot enough to shock the batter skyward, and seed oil does not. Use the dripping.
Proper Yorkshire Pudding
Ingredients
- 140 g Plain flour
- 4 large Free-range eggs
- 200 ml Whole milk
- 1 pinch Fine salt
- 60 g Beef dripping about 1 tbsp per muffin hole
Instructions
- Sift the flour and salt into a bowl. Make a well in the centre, crack in the eggs, and whisk gently, drawing the flour in as you go.
- Once you have a smooth thick paste, add the milk a splash at a time, whisking until the batter is the consistency of single cream and lump-free.
- Cover and rest in the fridge for at least an hour. Overnight is better; the gluten relaxes and the puddings rise higher.
- Heat the oven to 230°C (210°C fan). Put a teaspoon of dripping in each well of a muffin tin and place it in the oven. Wait until the dripping is smoking. This is not negotiable.
- Remove the tin carefully. Working fast, pour the batter into each well to about two-thirds full. It should hiss and bubble the moment it hits the fat.
- Return to the oven immediately and bake for 20 to 25 minutes. Do not open the door for the first 20 minutes.
- The puddings should rise like cathedrals, with crisp dark golden edges and a soft hollow centre. Serve straight from the oven.
Notes
The single most important step is the smoking-hot fat. If the dripping is not visibly smoking when the batter goes in, the puddings will not climb. Get that right, keep the oven door shut, and they rise every time.
This recipe is one of 33 in Bring Back the Dripping, a recipe book of Britain’s forgotten food, built on the animal fat we were told to fear. Get the full collection.
Get Bring Back the Dripping →More from the British table: Beef Dripping on Toast, a traditional Lancashire Hotpot. Or browse all our carnivore and traditional recipes.
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Keep reading
- Traditional Lancashire Hotpot Recipe
- Beef Dripping on Toast: The Original British Snack
- Carnivore Bacon Recipe: Perfect Crispy Bacon Every Time
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Cook like this every night: Bring Back the Dripping, 140 pages of fat-first British cooking.
About Sama Hoole
Sama has been coaching strength and physique transformation for nearly a decade. He writes about ancestral nutrition, powerbuilding, and cutting through the white noise of training and diet: no dogma, no fluff, just the needle movers. If it does not make you stronger, smarter, or more resilient, it does not belong in your routine.
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