British · Main Course

Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding

Name: Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding
Prep time: 5 min
Cook time: 28 min
Total time: 2 h 13 min
Yield: 6 servings
Cuisine: british
Ingredients: 2000 g Beef Rib, bone-in rib roast; 10 g Fine Sea Salt; 4 g Black Pepper; 45 g Beef Dripping; 160 g Wheat Flour; 150 g Egg, three eggs; 200 g Milk; 400 g Stock

A bone-in rib roast, its resting time used to bake puddings from the same batter of flour, egg and milk in the meat's own hot fat.

StyleSunday roast, gravy from the pan

MethodRoasting, Baking

DifficultyHard

Slices of roast beef with a Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes and a carrot, covered in gravy on a plate

Servings

Units

5mprep

28mcook

1h 40mrest

2h 13mTotal

Ingredients

Nutrition, per serving

968

kcal

59.1g

Protein

23.4g

Carbs

70.7g

Fat

Also per serving

Fibre0.9g

Sugars2.2g

Saturated fat31.5g

Sodium990mg

Calcium92.7mg

Iron6.8mg

Potassium894mg

Vitamin C0mg

As prepared with these ingredients, not as served. Estimated: The weight includes the rib bones, which are carved away and not eaten; the nutrition record describes the lean and fat alone.

AllergensDairy, Egg, Gluten. Allergen flags are computed from the ingredients listed in this recipe only. They cannot account for cross-contamination or for the specific product or brand you buy, and they are not medical or safety guidance. Stock: Both forms are meat-based stock. A separate vegetable stock would need its own record.

Method

Season the 2 kg beef rib roast all over with the 6 g fine sea salt and the 4 g ground black pepper, and rub with the 15 g beef dripping.
prep · 5m
Roast at 230 °C for 20m, to sear the outside and start the crust.
cook · 20m
Reduce the heat to 160 °C and continue roasting for 1h 15m, until a thermometer in the thickest part of the meat reads 54 °C for medium-rare.
rest · 1h 15m
Whisk the 140 g plain flour and the 2 g fine sea salt with the 3 eggs (150 g) and the 200 g milk until completely smooth.
prep · 5m
Leave the batter to stand at room temperature for 30m.
rest · 30m
Transfer the beef to a board, tent loosely with foil, and rest for 25m, reserving the pan and its juices.
rest · 25m
Divide the 30 g beef dripping between the cups of a pudding tin and heat in the oven at 230 °C until smoking hot. Pour in the batter and bake for 25m, without opening the door, until well risen, deeply golden and crisp.
cook · 25m
The fat has to be smoking hot before the batter goes in: that first violent contact is what sets the outside instantly and traps the steam that pushes the puddings up. A cool tin gives flat, dense puddings instead.
Set the roasting pan over a medium heat, stir the 20 g plain flour into the juices left behind, and cook briefly before whisking in the 400 g beef stock and the 2 g fine sea salt. Simmer for 10m, until thickened, scraping up any browned bits from the base of the pan.
cook · 10m
Carve the beef against the grain and serve with the puddings and the gravy.
cook · 8m
Common pitfallCarving straight from the oven pushes out the juices that resting redistributes through the meat. The rest is not optional time to fill with the puddings; it is what keeps the beef from bleeding out onto the board.

Ahead of timeThe pudding batter can be mixed up to a day ahead and kept covered in the refrigerator; bring it back to room temperature before it meets the hot fat.

FreezingBaked puddings freeze well on their own for up to a month and recrisp from frozen in a hot oven; the beef and gravy are best eaten fresh.

ReheatingReheat sliced beef gently, covered, with a little of the gravy, in a low oven, to avoid drying it out further past its resting doneness.

FreezesYes.

Roast beef's status as a marker of English identity is old enough to have become a joke at England's expense: the French nickname for the English, les rosbifs, is taken directly from the dish, a mark of the Englishman in French eyes memorably captured in satirist James Gillray's imagery of John Bull tucking into his beef [1]. Long before Yorkshire pudding entered the picture, a joint of roast beef was already doing cultural work well beyond the dinner table.

The pudding's origin is more practical than patriotic. The earliest named recipe appears in 1747, when Hannah Glasse's The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy gave the Yorkshire name to a batter previously cooked simply as "dripping pudding", set beneath a joint turning on a spit so the fat and juices falling from the meat would flavour and cook it as it roasted [2]. Its original place at the table was not beside the beef but before it: served first, with thick gravy, specifically to blunt appetites and make an expensive cut of meat go further, a purpose recorded in the regional saying "them 'at eats t'most pudding gets t'most meat" [2].

The two dishes only became a single, simultaneous course later, as Yorkshire pudding moved from a starter that stretched the meat to a side dish that shares the plate with it. What survives from the original arrangement is the method rather than the order of service: a pudding still made from nothing more than flour, egg and milk, and still raised by nothing but the shock of meeting fat hot enough to have come straight from underneath a roasting joint.

Sources

Le Rosbif, Rachel Hope Cleves (historian)A professional historian's account of the French nickname "les rosbifs" for the English, tracing it to the English association with beef and James Gillray's satirical imagery of John Bull.
The History and Origins of the Yorkshire Pudding, Historic UKOn the 1747 Hannah Glasse recipe that named the dish, its original role as a filling starter course, and the Yorkshire saying about pudding and meat.