Giant Yorkshire Pudding Fillings: Beef Brisket, Peppered Mash, Mashed Carrots, Peas and Beef Gravy

One of my favourite foods has always been a giant Yorkshire pudding filled to the brim!  As a Sunday dinner for one I find it very satisfying to put together and eat; a giant Yorkshire pudding with fillings is more exciting than a plate of separate food with a small Yorkshire pudding!

I’d slow cooked an Aldi Beef Brisket Joint the other day with this in mind as my Sunday dinner this week!  A beef brisket will make enough meals for 4-5 portions, plus, I cooked it in a way to make lots of gravy to freeze so I can enjoy real beef gravy with some meals instead of my usual Bisto granules.

I made the giant Yorkshire from scratch – of course, you can buy these at the major supermarkets easily enough.  When I make my own Yorkshire they work out at costing about 20p each, including the cost of the electricity to bake!  To buy a giant Yorkshire pudding costs about 50p.  But, as I’d planned this meal I’d actually gone out and bought the flour, eggs and milk I needed.  Today I deliberately made the Yorkshire pudding be a “low riser” as I often find they become too large to handle easily and can make the filling look inadequate.

How to Make a Flat Yorkshire Pudding for a Yorkshire Pudding Wrap

I am not overkeen on super-high Yorkshire puddings and will often make a flat Yorkshire pudding, especially if I’ve not got much filling.

I’ve also made Yorkshire pudding wraps for years – never dreaming they’d ever become “a thing” – they used to be a bit of a “dirty secret” type of food!  A guilty pleasure.

To make a flat Yorkshire pudding, perfect for a Yorkshire pudding wrap, is easier than making the Yorkshire rise.  There are a few techniques you can use.

• Don’t get the oil too hot so it’s smoking, just get the oil hot – hot is good enough!
• Open the door when you see the Yorkshire pudding rising a bit much, this will make it “flop” and become more flat. After that it should stay the size it is and not rise any more.
• Don’t be too bothered about “keeping the air in the Yorkshire pudding” during the beating stage.  To make a Yorkshire rise you beat air into the initial Yorkshire batter mix; less air, so less effort, will mean it won’t rise so much.

Cook Ahead!

What makes this meal a food cheats meal is that the beef brisket can be cooked ahead, so you’re just reheating it on demand.  I cooked this the day before and put the brisket in the fridge in gravy.  When I wanted to eat, I simply cut off some beef, spooned some gravy into the dish and microwaved it for 3-4 minutes, until it was hot.

The mashed vegetables were prepared in the morning too, as I was passing!  Once cooked and mashed, I then boxed up the mashed potato and mashed carrot in plastic takeaway boxes in the fridge.  I also made the Yorkshire pudding mix earlier and popped it in the fridge.

Once I was ready to eat, I simply had to bake the Yorkshire pudding (20 minutes), then microwave the mashed potato and vegetables so they were hot.  There was no planned mealtime, I could simply pull the meal together when I fancied it

For the Giant Yorkshire filling, today I chose:

• An Aldi beef brisket joint, cooked in the slow cooker for 6 hours on a bed of carrots and onions and 2 litres of gravy (because the objective this time was to make a lot of gravy for the freezer).
• Peppered mash – this was mashed potatoes cooked in the microwave steamer and then mashed with a butter and black pepper overload.
• Carrot mash – a carrot cooked in the microwave, then mashed with a fork.
• Peas – frozen peas, defrosted in boiling water and then drained and microwaved for 30 seconds.
• Gravy – this was the gravy from the beef brisket cooking.

Not a saucepan in sight!  Cooked in the slow cooker, microwave and a mini oven for the single Giant Yorkshire pudding; this is a meal you can make if you’ve no hob, or don’t want to be creating steam in the kitchen.

Menu Cost £1.30

The beef brisket was the most expensive part of the meal, but this was a special event to buy and cook this.  At £7 for 1Kg I probably used about £1 of meat (maybe less).  The Yorkshire pudding cost 15p in ingredients.  The vegetables cost about 10p.  Rounding it up, this Giant Yorkshire pudding filled with beef, vegetables and gravy cost about £1.30, which is a LOT more than I usually spend on food and cooking, but the beef brisket was “fall apart” and a real treat as a hot Sunday dinner that was pure comfort food.