You Don't Need a Special Pan to Make Popovers
They're surprisingly low-maintenance.
Baking is a lot of things to me—nourishment, self-expression, an ego boost—but this week I needed a break. Not a break from baking, but a break from high-maintenance recipes. Last week’s Chocolate and Tahini Babka was a full-on project, the kind where I had to read (and reread) the steps thoroughly to make sure I didn’t royally screw it up. It was worth it, of course, but yesterday I had a distinct distaste for anything requiring more than five ingredients, special equipment, or multi-tasking. What do you bake when you’re tired? Popovers.
A winning partnership of eggs, flour, milk, salt and fat, popovers are made from the same stuff as choux paste, Yorkshire puddings and the billowing Dutch Baby. Popovers have an almost crusty roll appearance, but crack one open and you’ll reveal the tender, feathery, eggy interior. Usually, it includes a big pocket in the center that you can fill with jam and butter, or serve alongside a hearty roast or beef stew. The combination of eggs, moisture and high heat creates the perfect setting for premium puffing activity. The rapid evaporation caused by the high oven setting creates cavernous steam pockets, so the batter starts to literally pop out of the pan. As it continues to cook and set, the structure from the proteins in the egg and the flour give the popover its signature shape and browning. All this, from a batter of five ingredients and a whisk.
Fake it ‘til you make it
But popovers need a popover pan, you say? Not so. You can use a cupcake or muffin pan and make a perfectly pudgy and robust popover. Popover pans are unique. They have six or 12 cups (similar in that way to a cupcake pan) but the cups are more narrow and about twice as deep. They also have extra space between each cup to allow for maximum airflow. That extra cup depth launches the batter for its signature “pop” over the pan, but a cupcake pan works well to support the batter popping up. To solve the spacing issue, we leave the center cups (in a 12-cup pan) empty so the popovers can get plenty of heat on all sides. It’s a great solution if the popover mood rarely strikes you, but if you envision yourself regularly making popovers, go ahead and buy a popover pan.
Shortening is the key
I’ve made recipes that use butter for richness and for greasing up the pan, but our recipe uses shortening for both. Butter is an emulsion of both fat and water, while shortening is 100% fat. We wanted a popover that maintained its crisp exterior, and butter, while tasty, introduces unneeded hydration in the batter, which can soften the crust. Furthermore, it's vital that the batter is able to “crawl” up the walls of the pan. Nonstick surfaces are more slick, so we grease the pan with shortening and dust it with flour to create a rougher surface. This also allows the popovers to release more easily from the pan later on. Shortening has a higher melting point, around 117°F compared to butter’s 90°F. Butter will melt down the walls of the cups while shortening coats more thoroughly and buys us a bit more time for the batter to puff up and out of the pan. While popovers can keep in the fridge for a couple days, they have the best texture straight out of the oven. Whisk this batter together about two hours before you want to serve them. Most of that time is hands-off—while the batter rests at room temperature and while it’s baking—so this recipe will never take over your schedule.
Give yourself a baking break with these low-maintenance bakes:
Baking Tip of the Week: Stab a hole in the crust
Just before these puffed up beauties come out of the oven, we give you a teeny-tiny annoying job to do: Poke a hole in each one of the popovers. Yep, stick your hand in the 400°F oven and give every single popover a little stab, then close the oven and let them bake for one more minute. It’s so easy to skip this step, but it’s also so easy to do it for a better result. With baked goods that rely on steam for lift, like the choux batter that I mentioned earlier, it’s important to let that steam out once its work is finished. The popovers have achieved all the height that they’re going to, the structure is set, and now you want to ensure the crust stays crisp. If you take the popovers out and simply let them cool as-is, the steam will soften the crusty top from the inside out. To prevent this, we ask you to take a long skewer (I use a paring knife, but a toothpick is fine too) and poke a hole into each popover. Where the hole is doesn’t really matter, it’s largely invisible. This is an escape hatch for the steam. When you close up the oven door, you give the steam time to escape and allow that last bit of crisping to occur on the top. It’s a small step that improves the final result, and you’ll be happy you did it.
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Allie Chanthorn Reinmann
Allie Chantorn Reinmann is a Digital Staff Writer for Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street. She’s a Thai-American chef who earned her diploma for Pastry and Baking Arts at The Institute of Culinary Education and worked professionally for over a decade honing her craft in New York City at places like Balthazar, Bien Cuit, The Chocolate Room, Billy’s Bakery and Whole Foods. Allie took her know-how from the kitchen to the internet, writing about food full-time at Lifehacker for three years and starting her own YouTube channel, ThaiNYbites. You can find her whipping up baked goods for cafés around Brooklyn, building wedding cakes and trying her hand (feet?) at marathon running. She’s working on her debut cookbook and lives in Brooklyn, NY.
