A giant Yorkshire pudding filled with vegetables is real comfort food! A giant Yorkshire can complete a meal and make a plate of simple food look like a real treat.  In the winter I’ll typically cook several over a few weeks, before moving on to cook other meals.  This is, in part, because if I’ve bought a pint of milk, it needs using up – so a succession of Yorkshire Pudding meals seems an easy option!

I will admit that while I like roast potatoes, I’m not that bothered about them to the point where I think they’re always worth the extra time they take to cook.  I’ve tried frozen roast potatoes in the past and “they’ll do”, but I need to try more brands to find what I call good roast potatoes.  So I’m more than happy to go without roast spuds!

The food cheats in this meal are that I used the microwave to cook and reheat everything – and a small toaster oven to make the large Yorkshire pudding.  I’d pre-cooked the beef brisket in the slow cooker.  So it was quite a “hands off” meal, with leisurely prep!  It’s even possible to cook the mash and vegetables ahead and store them in the fridge in microwave safe boxes, ready to microwave hot again in just 3 minutes.

Today’s giant Yorkshire pudding was filled with:

• Slow Cooked Beef Brisket: 100 grams of beef brisket, that I’d made in the slow cooker.  This is a “melt in the mouth” cut of beef that cooks well in the slow cooker – ideal if you want to make pulled beef, but I kept it chunky this time.  I’d frozen the brisket in portions.  I’d also portioned up and frozen the beef brisket gravy, so used a portion of that too.
• Mashed Potato: 250 grams of mashed potato – because it was an easy option and I’d bought a 2.5Kg bag of potatoes.  Although I use the green vegetable saver bags, which keep potatoes fresh for weeks, they do still need to be eaten in quite a lot of meals once I’ve bought a bag! I cooked these in a microwave steamer.
• Carrots: 1 carrot cut into batons, microwave cooked in a mug, as the microwave steamer seemed overkill.
• Peas: Frozen peas, defrosted in a mug with boiling water, then quickly microwaved for 20 seconds to ensure they were piping hot.

I made the Yorkshire pudding batter mix “by eye”, but will typically be using one egg and about 50 grams of flour. I cooked it in a sponge tin, as that’s the most convenient for me to use.

The Yorkshire pudding took about 20 minutes to cook – the mashed potato took 15-20 minutes from start to finish; carrots took 5 minutes.  I froze the beef stock/gravy quite thin, so added some Bisto granules to thicken it.

This is a great winter warmer meal, achievable if you’re cooking for one!

Menu Cost – £1.75:

The beef brisket was the most expensive part of this meal, with the portion costing about £1.30.  The Yorkshire pudding cost about 15p, the mashed potatoes cost about 20p. Adding in the carrots, peas and gravy, probably means this meal cost a total of ~£1.75.  Not the cheapest of meals, but a real treat and a great Sunday dinner.

Compared to a meagre microwave Sunday dinner from a shop, I had more than double the quantity – and a ready meal might cost you, typically, £1.50-£1.75.  Here are the current costs of some supermarket ready meal roast dinners for comparison:

Supermarket Ready Meal Beef Sunday Dinners:

Here’s a quick round up of some shop bought ready meal beef Sunday dinners:

• Lidl Chef Select Roast Beef Dinner, costs £1.49, weighs 400 grams.  Roast beef slices in beef gravy, roast potatoes, peas, baby carrots and a small Yorkshire pudding.
• Tesco Roast Beef Dinner, costs £1.75, weighs 400 grams. Roast beef slices in beef gravy, roast potatoes, peas, baby carrots and a small Yorkshire pudding. 12% of this is beef, so 48 grams (less than half what I’d cooked myself). Microwave in 12 minutes or oven-bake for 45 minutes from frozen.
• Asda Traditional Roast Beef Dinner, costs £2.70, weighs 400 grams. Roast beef slices in beef gravy, roast potatoes, peas, carrots and a small Yorkshire pudding. This contains 16% beef (~66 grams). Oven bake for 30 minutes.
• Bisto Roast Beef Dinner, costs £2.20, weighs 400 grams.  Roast beef slices in beef gravy, roast potatoes, peas, carrots and a small Yorkshire pudding. This contains 12% beef (~48 grams).

So you can see that a roast beef dinner is pretty much the same content across the shops – with mine I can add/change ingredients on a whim … and fully load the plate with a variety of vegetables if I wish.