Tag Archives: popover

BLT Steak Popovers

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popover 1

One word: Popover.

You will love them.  You will crave them.  You will keep yourself up at night thinking about them.

You see, it all started innocently enough last year during Arizona’s Restaurant Week.  The BF and I saw that BLT Steak had an awesome (read: SUPER cheap) prix fixe menu.  We had to go.  And so we did.

The food was phenomenal, but it didn’t even matter because I was full even before my salad came.  Full of this delicious, magical, puffy goodness that was brought to our table.  A cheesy balloon of delicious.  They bring these wonderful treats to your table after you order, while you await your meal, for no reason at all, except to taunt you.  You know that if you eat it, you won’t have room for your dinner, but how could you resist?

popover 3

You can’t.  You can’t resist.  Not if you are even a tiny bit human inside.

I asked to wrap my remaining bit of popover to take home, and the wonderful waitress brought me a brand new one instead.  That beautiful woman.  If you follow wee eats on instagram, you would have seen it.  It looked like this.

blt popover

That’s it after I brought it home and reheated it, wrapped in foil, in a 375 degree oven until it was warm again.  Magical, right?

So you can imagine how thrilled I was that they served them with a recipe card.  Yes, WITH the recipe.  Like all, “Here are our popovers, and we know you will love them so much that we will also give you the recipe.  Aren’t we amazing?  Why yes, yes we are”

Since I don’t need a giant belly-filling popover, I used my mini popover pan (this is the recipe that caused me to buy it, by the way), and instead of gruyere I used cheddar.  Because I happen to really like sharp cheddar.  Use whatever cheese you love, they are all yours.  Serve them warm with butter and sea salt.  Your life will be changed.

popover 2

BLT Steak Popovers

Makes 24 mini popovers or 12 large popovers

Printable Recipe

  • 2 cups milk, heat to very hot, but NOT boiling*
  • 4 eggs
  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 2 generous teaspoons kosher salt
  • 1 cup cheese, finely grated (BLT uses gruyere, I used cheddar for these)

1.  Place popover pan on a rimmed baking sheet and put into the oven.  Preheat your oven, with the pan in it, to 350°F

2.  Warm milk on stove top or microwave until hot, but not boiling (about 1.5 – 2 minutes in my microwave).  Set aside.

3.   In a small bowl combine the flour and kosher salt, set aside.

4.  Whisk eggs until frothy and pale yellow in color, you can do this in a blender, in a large bowl with an immersion blender, or with a standard mixer.

5.  Once frothy, reduce the speed and slowly add 1/3 of the milk to the eggs until combined.  You want to make sure to go slowly with the milk so that you don’t curdle your eggs.  Once 1/4 of the milk is added, add slowly another 1/3 of the milk while mixing.

6.  While continuing to mix on low, add your flour mixture.

7.  Once flour is incorporated, add the remaining 1/3 of milk and mix until blended.

8.  Here is where the trickiness comes in, you can rest the batter anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes if you feel so inclined.  But you see my popovers up there?  I didn’t have the patience to rest anything.  Those were baked right away.

9.  Remove hot pans from oven and spray with non-stick pan spray* (or drop a little butter, or a little shortening, you remember this part from this recipe, right?), and pour batter about 3/4 (maybe a little more) to the top of each cup.  Sprinkle the top liberally with the grated cheese, be careful not to have the cheese touch the actual baking cup or it will melt and stick and prevent your popover from “popping”.

10.  Bake 50 minutes for full-size popovers, or about 35 to 40 minutes for mini popovers (I started peeking through the window around 30 minutes, if you don’t have a window, don’t even think about opening that door until 35 minutes in).  Once done, remove from the oven and allow to cool about 5 to 10 minutes, until you can comfortably handle them. Note: If you are using a muffin tin or mini muffin tin, your baking time may be less

* If you’re afraid of curdling your eggs, you can probably skip warming the milk and just make sure to use room temperature milk and eggs.  I just said to warm it because that’s what BLT says (and that’s what I did, and it worked beautifully).

* You can grease your tins with butter (which I used), but there is folklore surrounding the need to use vegetable shortening, and equally as much about using vegetable oil, or even PAM.  I put about a teaspoon-sized cube of butter into each mini tube before putting it into the oven.  The pool of butter did give them little “pigtails” at the end, I wish I’d taken a picture.  They were super cute.

* I’ve read that regular-size muffin tin popovers will bake in about 35 minutes or 18 – 23 minutes for mini-muffin tin popovers., but I’m not sure since I’ve not made them.

* If making multiple batches, reheat the pan in the oven for 10 minutes before adding your second batch of batter

Sunday Brunch: Cinnamon Sugar Popovers

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cinn popover 1

There are a lot of “tricks” that are mentioned whenever making popovers.  So many, in fact, that it makes you wonder how anyone makes a popover at all.  Half of them are even contradictory to each other, which is why it took me so long to finally get around to making them.  You always see the pictures of sad, deflated popovers (Even Food & Wine’s “foolproof” recipe features a picture of sunken popovers) and everyone’s got a “secret” to achieve the perfect popover.  I will tell you the only important piece of advice, the only advice that I followed: DO NOT OPEN THE OVEN DOOR.

I made the batter, put them in the oven, DID NOT TOUCH THE DOOR and they bake (and poofed) perfectly.

My one request:  Please make this in a popover pan.  I hate buying single-purpose items for the kitchen, but you will not achieve nearly the same lift with a muffin pan as you will with a popover pan.  I’m sorry, it’s just not happening.  So, use a muffin pan if you must, but just know that you are absolutely, without a doubt, robbing yourself of the true popover experience.

cinn popover 2

These cinnamon-sugar popovers are light, airy, and perfectly sweet.  As I was biting into it, I was thinking about how much the flavor resembled one of my other brunch favorites, the german pancake.  Now I feel like I should cover my next german pancake in cinnamon sugar.  Yeah, that’s totally happening.

Sorry, back to the popovers.  They taste like a donut without the heaviness… and without all the guilt associated with eating a donut.  I ate like 3 or 4 of these before I felt as guilty as I feel about eating just one donut!  (Nutritional value totally unrelated to the guilt, this could be a bad thing, but they’re not deep-fried so I’m going to say I’m winning this one).

These, like all popovers, are best served fresh from the oven, but the BF was definitely snacking on the last of them cold as an after-lunch snack.  So they’re definitely still edible, but there’s no way that they are as delicious.

If you find yourself crunched for time, you can make the batter the night before, store it in the fridge, and bake them off the next morning (just make sure you take it out of the fridge and let it come to room temperature before baking).  The batter comes together so quickly, though, that I don’t see why you would possibly need to make it in advance.

Cinnamon-Sugar Popovers

Makes 12 large or 24 mini popovers 

Printable Recipe

For the popovers:

  • 2 cups milk, warmed
  • 4 large eggs
  • 2 cups all purpose flour
  • ½ Tablespoon salt
  • ½ teaspoon sugar
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the sugar dusting:

  • ½ cup granulated sugar
  • 1 Tablespoon ground cinnamon
  • 6 Tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

1.  Place the greased popover pan on a baking sheet and place in the oven while it preheats to 350ºF.

2.  Once the oven is preheated, warm the milk in the microwave about 1 minute, just until warm to the touch.  Set aside.  Whisk the flour, sugar, and salt together in another bowl.

3.  In a large bowl, whisk the eggs until pale yellow.  Once frothy, slowly whisk in the milk.  Make sure the milk is warm, not hot, or the eggs will curdle.

4.  Add the flour and whisk to combine.  Add the vanilla extract and continue whisking until smooth.

5.  Carefully remove the pan from the oven and fill each tin ½ to ¾ full with batter and quickly return the pan to the oven.  Once the oven door closes, lock it with your imaginary oven door lock.

6.  Bake 50 minutes for full-size popovers, or about 35 to 40 minutes for mini popovers (I started peeking through the window around 30 minutes, if you don’t have a window, don’t even think about opening that door until 35 minutes in).  Once done, remove from the oven and allow to cool about 5 to 10 minutes, until you can comfortably handle them. Note: If you are using a muffin tin or mini muffin tin, your baking time may be less (see below). 

7.  Mix the cinnamon and sugar together in a bowl.  When you can handle them, dip the popovers in the melted butter and then toss with cinnamon-sugar mixture.

* You can grease your tins with butter (which I used), but there is folklore surrounding the need to use vegetable shortening, and equally as much about using vegetable oil, or even PAM.  I put about a teaspoon-sized cube of butter into each mini tube before putting it into the oven.  The pool of butter did give them little “pigtails” at the end, I wish I’d taken a picture.  They were super cute.

* I’m lazy and too much whisking makes me tired, so I used an immersion blender, and added the ingredients in the order listed.

* I’ve read that regular-size muffin tin popovers will bake in about 35 minutes or 18 – 23 minutes for mini-muffin tin popovers., but I’m not sure since I’ve not made them.