How To Make the Best Popover Recipe - Through Her Looking Glass (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret to making popovers pop? ›

The gluten in flour (and protein from the eggs) create the structure that traps steam in rising popovers. Without this structure, steam will escape like air from a punctured balloon, and your popovers will puddle, not pop.

Whisk in the butter, and let the batter rest for 15 minutes. After 15 minutes, the little lumps will have risen to the top. Give the batter a few more good licks with the whisk to recombine. Grease a standard muffin tin.

The batter should be easily pourable and relatively liquidy—if it isn't, you may want to strain. Otherwise, mixing the batter is the simplest part of the process! A popover pan should be greased. I prefer to use melted butter, but oil or nonstick spray would work too.

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. Many popover pans have the cups welded to a wire rack. While this looks odd, it promotes even circulation of air and heat around the tins.

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.”

This isn't an issue, if you're bringing them right from the oven to the table. But if you want the popovers to hold their shape longer without deflating and settling quite as much, bake them for an additional 5 minutes (for a total of 40 minutes) IF you can do so without them becoming too dark.

If you don't want your beautiful popovers to collapse, simply use a sharp paring knife and pierce the bottom of the hot popovers to allow steam to escape and place them on a cooling rack. Do not let them cool in the pan, they'll lose their shape.

A: If your popovers lose volume when they come out of the oven, they are probably underbaked. When these airy baked goods aren't cooked enough, too much steam stays trapped inside. That moisture condenses once they're removed from the oven, causing them to collapse.

Finished popovers will be golden-brown, feel dry to the touch, and sound hollow when tapped. Prick with a Knife, Cool, and Eat!: Turn the popovers out onto a drying rack. Pierce the bottoms with a knife to allow steam to escape. Cool just enough so they can be handled and then eat immediately.

Can you make popovers the night before? ›

To make ahead: You can make the batter and refrigerate it for up to one day before baking. Just let the batter come to room temperature and whisk it well or whirl it in the blender for a few seconds before pouring it into the muffin tins. To store: Store baked and cooled popovers in a ziptop bag for up to a day.

You can buy special popover pans, with deeper, narrower cups which force the tops up in a more pronounced fashion, but I wouldn't bother. Any muffin pan will produce a perfect popover if the butter is hot, the batter is rich and smooth and the baker is patient.

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.

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 notes on her recipe card said, “serve with hearty soups.” I think these popovers are wonderful with most any soup or pasta. I often serve them with my Butternut Squash Soup and Broccoli, Mushroom, Spinach and Cheese Pasta. Robert insists on eating them with butter; they're so moist I think they are good just plain!

If you open the oven door the temperature inside can drop too quickly and the popovers will not rise properly. Whip the batter up really airy right before you add it to the pan they'll rise extra high.

Popovers are like little balloons. An elastic network of egg, milk, and flour proteins (particularly gluten) forms as the popover batter is mixed. This rubbery network then “inflates” as air trapped inside the batter expands during baking.

Popovers are a type of popup. They are on the same level as dialogs and other groups like alerts, notifications, lightboxes, etc. Popovers are typically non-modal. They usually don't use backdrops since dimming the interactive content wouldn't make sense.