UK Recipe: Toad in the Hole

Another UK dish that we've decided to try is Toad in the Hole, which involves the combination of sausages and Yorkshire pudding. Yorkshire pudding, for those who don't know, is a delightful pastry-shell-like side dish that is often served with meals (as a starch, I suppose). To turn it into a main dish, this recipe adds sausages. We also made a nice onion gravy to go with it and some vegetables on the side. The recipe turned out quite nicely:

Unfortunately, the children weren't very interested in eating them. Lucy ate some sausage; Jacob took a few bites of Yorkshire pudding. Boy, did they miss out! This recipe is delicious and will be repeated by us.

You can find the recipe we used at this web site. The recipe is good for making individual toads in the hole and also provides directions for making one large dish. Here it is in case you are too lazy to click through or the about.com web site has gone belly up.

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Cook Time: 35 minutes

Total Time: 50 minutes

Ingredients:

• 4 large, fresh eggs, measured in a jug
• Equal quantity of milk to eggs
• Equal quantity of all purpose/plain flour to eggs
• Pinch of salt
• 2 tbsp lard, beef dripping or vegetable oil
• 6 beef or pork sausages

Preparation:

Serves 4

• Heat the oven to the highest temperature possible.
• Pour the eggs and milk into a large mixing bowl and add the pinch of salt. Whisk thoroughly with an electric hand beater or hand whisk. Leave to stand for 10 minutes.
• Gradually sieve the same volume of flour (as the eggs) into the milk and egg mixture, again using an electric hand beater or hand-whisk to create a lump free batter resembling thick cream, if there are any lumps pass the batter through a fine sieve.
• Leave the batter to rest in the kitchen for a minimum of 30 minutes, longer if possible - up to several hours.
• Place a pea-sized piece of lard, dripping or ½tsp vegetable oil in a Yorkshire pudding tin (4 x 2"/5cm hole tin) or 12-hole muffin tin and heat in the oven. Cut each sausage into pieces to fit the holes of the pudding tin, place one piece into the hot fat and return the tray to the oven. Cook until the sausage pieces are golden brown (approx 15 mins) golden.
• Give the batter another good whisk adding 2 tbsps of cold water and fill a third of each section of the tin with batter and return quickly to the oven.
• Leave to cook until golden brown approx 20 minutes. Repeat the last step again until all the batter is used up.
  

You have to love a recipe that tells you to turn the oven temperature as high as possible!

Another issue is where the name came from. The short answer is nobody knows. The sausage sort of looks like an amphibian peaking out of the pudding but that is a stretch. Feel free to make up your own etymology.