Ina Garten-Inspired Popovers

Compiled by Igor Kukolj, Editor. Nobody here has cooked this — how these are made.

A popover contains flour, eggs, milk, butter and salt. There is no baking powder and no yeast, and once you know that, every instruction in the recipe explains itself.

A popover rises entirely on steam. Water in the batter turns to vapour, the egg protein sets around it, and the whole thing inflates into a hollow shell. That means the batter must be thin enough to turn to steam quickly — the consistency of single cream, not of pancake batter — and the tin must be hot enough to flash it into vapour on contact. Everything else is detail.

Thick batter cannot generate steam fast enough. A cool tin lets the shell set before the steam arrives. Those are the only two ways this fails.

Rest the batter, and use it at room temperature

Thirty minutes lets the flour hydrate fully, which makes the batter smooth and the rise even. Cold batter from the fridge drops the tin's temperature the moment it goes in and costs you an inch of height. Take the milk and eggs out early, or warm the milk slightly.

Do not open the oven

The structure is a wet shell held up by pressure until the egg sets. Opening the door in the first twenty-five minutes drops the temperature and the pressure at once, and they collapse. There is no recovery from this — bake them by the timer and look through the glass.

Pierce them or they go soggy

The inside is full of hot vapour that condenses back to water as they cool. A small cut in the side lets it out and the shell stays crisp. Left sealed, they soften within ten minutes.

Storing

Popovers are at their best in the first ten minutes and merely good after that. They do not keep, but they revive better than you would expect: five minutes at 180°C brings back most of the crispness.