Grandmother’s Toad in a Hole

Post-Memorial-Day quiet week. Brayden is thirty-five weeks old. The rehearsal-dinner is two weeks out. The apartment has been the kind of quiet that only a child who is almost-walking can produce — he cruises the furniture for forty-five minutes, sits and plays on the floor for twenty, and naps for an hour-and-a-half. The day cycles through these phases the way the cafe cycles through breakfast, lunch, dinner.

Grandmother’s Toad in a Hole is the Bryant-side British recipe — Dustin’s great-grandmother on the paternal side was from a small English mill town near Sheffield and brought the toad-in-a-hole recipe to Memphis when she emigrated in 1928. The dish is sausage links baked in a Yorkshire-pudding batter — eggs, flour, milk, salt, pepper — in a hot oven until the batter rises around the sausages into a golden eggy popover-like envelope.

The technique question on toad in the hole is the oven heat at the moment the batter goes in. The pan needs to be smoking hot — preheated for ten full minutes in the oven at 425 with a tablespoon of bacon grease or beef tallow in the bottom of the cast-iron skillet. The sausages need to be browned in the hot fat for two minutes before the batter goes in. The batter goes in cold, in a thin stream, around the sausages, and the dish goes back in the oven without opening the door for thirty minutes.

Sunday I made it. The smoke alarm went off briefly at the ten-minute preheat. The batter rose dramatically around the sausages and held its rise through the bake. The whole skillet came out of the oven looking like a small golden landscape. Dustin had three sausages and a quarter of the batter. The dish smelled like Carol’s Memphis kitchen for the rest of the afternoon.

Prep Time: 5 minutes | Cook Time: 10 minutes | Total Time: 15 minutes | Servings: 4

Ingredients

4 slices thick-cut white or sourdough bread
4 large eggs
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, divided
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder (optional)
Hot sauce or shredded cheddar for serving (optional)

Instructions

Cut the holes. Use a small round cookie cutter or the rim of a juice glass (about 2 1/2 inches wide) to press a circle out of the center of each bread slice. Set the cut-out rounds aside — you’ll toast them alongside.
Heat the skillet. Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in a large cast iron skillet or non-stick pan over medium heat, tilting to coat the surface evenly. Work in batches of two if your pan isn’t large enough for all four slices.
Toast the bread. Lay the bread slices flat in the pan and let them toast for about 1 minute, until the underside is just starting to turn golden.
Add the eggs. Flip each slice, then immediately crack one egg directly into each hole. Season the egg with salt, pepper, and garlic powder if using. Add the bread cut-outs to the pan beside the slices to toast.
Cook to your liking. Cover the pan loosely and cook 2 to 3 minutes for a runny yolk, or 3 to 4 minutes for a fully set yolk. The whites should be completely opaque before serving.
Finish and serve. Add the remaining butter to the pan if doing a second batch. Serve each slice immediately with the toasted round on the side. Top with hot sauce or a pinch of shredded cheddar if desired.

Nutrition (per serving)

Grandmother’s Toad in a Hole