British man's 'genius' Yorkshire pudding hack sparks a roast dinner debate

A British man has just about reinvented the English roast dinner with his genius spin on the Yorkshire pudding.

For those unfamiliar with it, a Yorkshire pudding is a bready accompaniment to a roast dinner. It's made of a batter of eggs, flour and milk or water, is usually baked or fried in a pan and is served as a means of scooping up gravy. 

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It's essentially a side dish. However, Oli Paterson from Greater Manchester recently shared a video to his Instagram account that turned the whole tradition on its head.

Paterson fried off his roast ingredients in a pan, and then poured the Yorkshire batter around them before popping the whole thing in the oven to bake, effectively making the meal into a roast dinner version of 'toad in the hole'. 

Let me explain. Toad in the hole uses a similar batter to Yorkshire puddings, which is poured into a pan with sausages in it. As it bakes, the batter puffs up around the sausages and creates a large bread pudding with the meat hidden in it.

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Paterson's technique is similar, but with roast in the hole rather than sausages. Genius. What you get is your Yorkshire pudding surrounding your whole roast and soaking up those juices, much like toad in the hole with does with all those sausage flavours. 

First up, he browns off his roast in the pan, then adds cabbage, potatoes, parsnips, carrots, and some asparagus before pouring the Yorkshire batter all around the ingredients. 

The whole pan goes into the oven and the batter puffs up around the roast ingredients, catching all the pan juices. He slides the whole thing onto a board and tops it with gravy to serve.

Paterson posted the video on Instagram along with the caption: "Why serve your roast dinner on a plate when you can serve it inside a Yorkshire Pudding?" His 52,000 followers were mostly into it, with comments ranging from 'why have we never thought of this?!' to 'the most genius thing I've seen in a long time,' and 'mad roast in hole'. 

RECIPE: Toad in the hole with gravy (above)

A few traditionalists weren't so keen, suggesting a roast dinner should just be left alone, but plenty more tagged their mates and friends to use it as inspiration for their next roast dinner. 

RECIPE: Classic roast beef with Yorkshire puddings (pictured)

Personally, we think it looks like great fun and a perfect combination of roast dinner and toad in the hole, taking both dishes to new places. We also wonder what else might be cooked this way if we just thought outside the box a little bit more. Experimentation is how great dishes are made, after all. 

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