Best Oil for Yorkshire Puddings (and Which to Avoid)

Most Yorkshire pudding problems get blamed on the batter. In my kitchen, the fat in the bottom of the tin is usually the thing that decided how they turned out. Choose the wrong oil, or use it wrong, and you get flat, greasy puddings welded to the tray. Choose the right one and heat it properly, and they climb.

Here is what I use, what I avoid, and why it makes the difference it does.

What the fat actually has to do

A Yorkshire pudding rises because cold batter hits fiercely hot fat. That thermal shock steams the water in the batter, the outside sets, and the middle pushes up and out. The fat has to be hot enough to do that the moment the batter lands, which means it has to sit close to smoking without burning.

That last part is the whole game. Every fat has a smoke point, the temperature at which it starts to break down and smoke. Yorkshire puddings are baked at around 220°C, or 200°C in a fan oven, so you want a fat that shrugs that off rather than one that scorches and turns bitter before the batter even goes in. If you want to get the batter itself right too, our definitive guide to batter ratios covers that side.

The oils I reach for

For pure flavour, beef dripping is the traditional choice and still the best-tasting one. It gives that proper roast-dinner savouriness you do not get from a neutral oil, and it copes with roasting heat. Lard does a similar job if dripping is hard to find.

If you want something that always works and does not need tracking down, a neutral oil with a high smoke point is the reliable answer. Sunflower, vegetable, rapeseed (the same thing as canola) and groundnut oil all sit comfortably above the temperature the oven runs at. They have almost no flavour of their own, so they let the beef or the gravy do the talking, and they are the obvious pick if you are cooking for vegetarians.

If I had to name one everyday choice, it would be plain sunflower or vegetable oil. It is cheap, it is already in most cupboards, and it holds its heat without any fuss.

The two to leave out

Olive oil is the one people reach for out of habit, and it is the wrong call here. It starts smoking at a much lower temperature than the oven needs, so it burns before the fat is hot enough to lift the batter. Extra virgin is worse again. Save it for salads.

Butter is the other trap. It burns even sooner, because the milk solids in it blacken and turn the puddings bitter. You end up with a scorched, speckled base and none of the rise you were after. If you love a buttery note, brush a little on after they come out, not before they go in.

How much, and how hot

Two mistakes account for most of the greasy or stuck puddings people write to me about. The first is too much fat. A puddle of oil in the bottom of each hole leaves you with soggy, oily-bottomed puddings that slump. You want just enough to come about half a centimetre up the sides of each cup, no more. A teaspoon per hole is a good rule.

The second is fat that was not hot enough. Get the oil into the tin, put the tin in a fully preheated oven, and leave it until the fat is shimmering and just starting to smoke. That usually takes a good ten minutes. When you pour the batter in, it should hiss and spit straight away. If it sits there quietly, the fat was too cool, and the puddings will stick and stay flat. If flat puddings are your recurring problem, there is more on the causes in why Yorkshire puddings do not rise.

This is where the tin earns its place. A thin, lightweight tray loses its heat the second you open the oven door and pour, so the fat cools at exactly the wrong moment. A heavy carbon steel tin holds that heat, so the oil is still fierce when the batter lands. Our Yorkshire pudding tins are made without PTFE or PFOA, and the heavy gauge is the reason the fat stays hot enough to do its job, which is also why we back them with a 10-year warranty.

Choosing between the two comes down to the size of your table. If you are weighing up sizes and holes, our buying guide to the best Yorkshire pudding tin walks through it, and the care and use guide covers keeping the coating at its best.

The oil is not a detail. Pick one that can take the heat, use a teaspoon per hole, get it smoking before the batter goes near it, and back it with a tin that holds its temperature. Do that and the rise looks after itself. For the full method start to finish, there is also our ultimate Yorkshire pudding guide.