Martha Stewart is a bestselling author, entrepreneur, and lifestyle expert who has taught millions of people through generations the joy of entertaining, cooking, gardening, collecting, crafting, and home renovating via her eponymous magazine, Martha Stewart Living, Emmy-winning television shows, and 99 books (and counting). Based in Katonah, N.Y., where she helms her 156-acre Bedford Farm, Martha is America's first self-made female billionaire.
How do you transform a basic egg batter into tall, tender, airy pockets surrounded by a burnished crust? It’s not magic, but kitchen physics, sparked by the combination of a preheated pan and a hot oven. Popovers, the American version of Yorkshire pudding, are quick and easy to make, and add a sense of fun to any meal, from a holiday brunch to a simple supper.
If eggs and milk are cold, before combining, submerge whole eggs in warm water 10 minutes and heat milk until just warm. Preheat oven to 450°F with a nonstick popover pan on rack in lowest position.
Don't have a popover pan? Follow our tips for using a muffin pan instead.
Whisk eggs and milk:
After you have combined eggs and milk in a large bowl, whisk together until very frothy. This should only take about 1 minute. Have the flour and salt measured out and ready to go.
Add dry ingredients:
Add flour and salt to egg mixture. We tested out a blender and an electric stand mixer when making the batter, but concluded that whisking by hand produces the most tender, airy popovers.
Whisk again:
Whisk flour and salt into egg mixture just until batter is the consistency of heavy cream with some small lumps remaining. See those air bubbles? They are what will cause the popovers to rise.
Remove empty pan from oven:
Remove popover pan from oven and coat with cooking spray.
Fill and bake:
Fill popover cups about three-quarters full with batter. Bake 20 minutes, then reduce oven temperature to 350°. Continue to bake until golden brown and dry to the touch, about 20 minutes more.
Remove from oven:
Popovers lose their crunch if they linger in the pan, so turn them out on a wire rack immediately and poke a small opening in the side of each with a paring knife to let the steam escape. Serve right away.
Using a Muffin Pan Instead of a Popover Pan
Though a nonstick popover pan results in optimal height, a standard muffin tin works fine, too—but the popovers will be smaller. (Don't worry, they'll still be delicious.)
To make, only fill the outer cups of the standard muffin tin with popover batter; they will get better circulation in the oven. When baking, reduce cook time by 5 minutes.
Bread Flour or All-Purpose Flour: The key to making these popovers super light and fluffy is to use bread flour. Bread flour contains a higher amount of protein than all-purpose flour, causing it to yield a much lighter and fluffier popover.
Preheating your oven to the correct temperature is probably the most important thing you can do to ensure popover success. The hotter your oven, the higher your popovers will rise. Which makes sense: the faster liquid in the batter turns into steam, the more chance your popover has to expand before its crust sets.
There's just one thing that will make the popovers better, and that's time. The batter needs time to rest before baking so that it creates a more tender popover in the end. So, cover the batter and pop it into the refrigerator for at least an hour, but preferably overnight.
My biggest tip for creating perfect popovers is to use warm milk and room-temperature eggs with absolutely no chill on them. Do not take the milk and eggs from the fridge and use them. Cold ingredients will give you dense popovers. Warm ingredients will give you light, airy, and perfect popovers.
The high proportion of liquid in the batter creates steam that causes the popovers to puff up like the popover pictured below. The conversion of the liquid in the batter to steam is dramatic. One part liquid converts to 1600 parts steam.
These tins are really only useful for making popovers, but oh, what beautiful popovers they make! Popover pans are distinguished from regular muffin tins by their deep, steep-sided wells. This forces the batter upwards and results in a popover with a puffy dome and crispy sides.
Because popovers rely on steam to rise — as opposed to baking powder, baking soda, or yeast — you want your batter warm when entering the oven. This King Arthur Flour article says it best: “The warmer your batter going into the oven, the more quickly it'll produce steam: simple as that.”
How To Create a Popover. To create a popover, add the data-toggle="popover" attribute to an element. Note: Popovers must be initialized with jQuery: select the specified element and call the popover() method.
The oven and pan needs to be VERY hot. Be sure to preheat the popover pan when you preheat the oven. You'll need to spray the pan very generously as well.
Rice flour and cornstarch work particularly well because they fry up crispier than wheat flour. They also absorb less moisture and fat during the frying process, making the products less greasy. This is why rice flour is often used when making tempura because it produces a very thin and crispy, dry crust.
All-Purpose Flour: If a recipe calls simply for "flour," it's calling for all-purpose flour. Milled from a mixture of soft and hard wheat, with a moderate protein content in the 10 to 12 percent range, all-purpose flour is a staple among staples.
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