British Sausages Baked in Yorkshire Pudding

Place 200 g flour, 4 g salt, and 1 g pepper in a bowl or pitcher with a capacity of about 1.5 l. Add 3 eggs and about half of the 300 ml milk, and whisk until smooth, without lumps. Gradually whisk in the remaining milk, using all 300 ml; the batter should flow freely from the whisk, like a thin pancake batter. Do not add baking powder or extra flour.

Cover the batter and let it rest on the counter for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 220°C on the conventional setting without a fan, with the rack in the middle and room above it for the batter to rise. Prepare a rigid metal baking pan with internal dimensions of about 30 × 22 cm and a height of 6 cm, without any coating unsuitable for this temperature. Do not use a glass or ceramic pan, and do not line the bottom with parchment paper; the batter will be poured directly onto the hot fat.

After the batter has rested for 30 minutes, pour all 30 ml oil into the pan and spread it over the bottom. Arrange all eight raw sausages in a single layer with space between them, without piercing the casings, and place in the preheated oven. Bake for 20 minutes at 220°C, turning the sausages after about 10 minutes, until they begin to brown and the fat in the bottom is very hot and sizzling. This is a preliminary bake, not the final check that the meat is done; leave all the oil and rendered fat in the pan.

Briefly whisk the rested batter. Using oven mitts, place the hot pan on a stable heatproof mat and immediately pour all the batter between the sausages, scraping out the pitcher. The batter should sizzle as it touches the fat, and the tops of the sausages should remain visible; work carefully because hot fat may splatter. Immediately return the pan to the oven, without stirring further and without pouring off any fat.

Bake for 35–40 minutes at 220°C and do not open the oven for the first 30 minutes after pouring in the batter. The edges should rise high and become golden brown and crisp, and the batter between the sausages should be clearly set, without a liquid or sticky floury layer; the center may be soft and moist. Near the end, cut the thickest sausage in half: the meat must be cooked all the way through, without a raw, sticky center, not just browned on the outside. If the batter or sausage is undercooked, return both test halves to the pan as well and bake the whole dish for another 5–10 minutes, then check again; if the top is already deeply browned, cover it loosely with foil.

Remove the pan and immediately cut the baked batter into four servings with two sausages in each. Lift out the portions with a wide spatula, keeping the crisp edges and set center intact. Serve immediately; a little settling after removal from the oven is natural.