If you’ve never made popovers, you are missing out. They are one of the easiest-to-prepare and most versatile quick breads out there. Make a batch in the morning and you can enjoy them all day long, literally. Split and fill them with soft-scrambled eggs or fresh-cut fruit for breakfast. Enjoy them with a leafy green salad or bowl of soup for lunch. Then serve them with a saucy entrée for dinner – like naan, popovers are perfect for wiping your plate clean.
The batter – a mixture of eggs, milk, butter, flour and salt – comes together after just two minutes of whisking. The only fancy equipment you need is a popover pan in order to achieve light, airy rolls with crisp, golden domes. (Supposedly you can bake popovers in a muffin tin, but I imagine the result is not nearly as gratifying.)
The trick to these foolproof popovers is preheating the pan. Once it’s piping hot, quickly add the batter and put it back in the oven. After 35 minutes, you can dig in!
Recipe adapted from Williams-Sonoma Kitchen.
- 3 eggs, room temperature
- 1 cup milk, room temperature
- 1 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- ½ teaspoon sea salt
- Place a nonstick 6-cup popover pan on the bottom rack of the oven and preheat to 450 degrees.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together eggs and milk. Then whisk in the butter.
- In a large bowl, combine the flour and salt. Then whisk in the egg mixture until smooth, about 2 minutes. Pour mixture into a large glass measuring cup; this allows you to quickly and easily distribute the batter among the popover pan wells.
- Once oven is preheated, carefully remove popover pan from the oven and coat wells with cooking spray. Moving quickly, divide the batter evenly among the wells and place pan back in oven.
- Bake for 20 minutes. Then reduce oven temperature to 325 degrees and bake for an additional 15 minutes. Do not open the oven door while popovers are baking.
- Remove pan from the oven and turn out popovers onto a wire rack. Serve immediately. Or, if not serving right away, poke a small hole in the side of each popover with a toothpick or paring knife to let the steam escape.
These look great. I have a popover pan but have yet to make popovers. I am going to do it this weekend!
Yay! Enjoy!
I haven’t baked popovers in years. Then on Thursday (1/12/17) the Minneapolis Star Tribune ran an article about the closing of the downtown Minneapolis Macy’s, formerly Dayton’s Department Store, and the Thursday Taste section ran an entire page of recipes from the restaurants on the 8th floor of Dayton’s, the Oak Grill and the Sky Room, including the recipe for the popovers served at the Oak Grill. My husband saw it and asked me to make popovers sometime soon. So I decided to make Italian wedding soup and popovers for supper tonight. But I was a little leery of that Dayton’s recipe. I have only one popover pan, with six wells, and the recipe’s yield was 12 to 14 popovers, and it would have been difficult to halve. Plus, it did not call for starting out with a hot oven and reducing the oven temp midway through baking. So I did a Google search and found your recipe, and they turned out perfectly. My daughter’s boyfriend had never had popovers before! He loved them though.
Hi Jeanne – I am so glad you and your family liked the recipe! And Italian wedding soup sounds so delicious right now. Thanks for sharing your story!
Wonderful recipe. Is it possible to substitute almond milk for the regular?
Thanks, Victoria! I’ve never tried using almond milk in the recipe, but I bet it would. Let me know if you give it a try.