Eggy Puds: The Breakfast Dish You Didn't Know You Need

If you followed my adventures in Yorkshire puddings the other day, you know that resting your batter overnight can have a profoundly delicious effect on the end product. Now I'm giving you another incentive to let it rest: the best morning-after-roast-supper breakfast you've ever had.

All you've got to do is make an extra-large batch of Yorkshire pudding batter when you're prepping for your Prime Rib dinner. Instead of baking all that batter at once, save some of it (about a half cup of batter per person is the right amount for a big breakfast) and pop it back in the fridge overnight.

The next morning, fry some diced bacon in an oven-safe skillet until crisp—cast iron works best for this because of its inherent non-stick abilities—then pour the rested Yorkshire pudding batter directly over it. Of course, you can use things other than bacon as well. Crumbled breakfast sausage would be great (and a nice little nod to British toad-in-the-hole), as would mushrooms and onions sautéed in some butter. Any vegetable or meat you'd toss into an omelet is fair game.

Once the batter's poured in, transfer the whole thing to a 450°F oven and let it bake. The pudding should rise quite dramatically, forming a bowl-shaped crater in the center, its edges lined with bacon (or sausage, or veggies, or whatever you stuck in there). The key here is to let it bake slightly longer than you think is necessary. You want the pudding to be well-browned on all sides, including the bottom, in order to ensure that it stays puffy and crisp once you pull it out of the oven. If you're feeling extra-decadent, I suggest grating some Parmesan or other flavor-packed cheese over the edges and bottom of the pudding to brown for the last few minutes of baking (and no, opening the oven door to add cheese to the pudding will not make it collapse, despite what many hand-wringing/hand-holding authorities may tell you).

Just before the pudding comes out of the oven, separately fry some eggs in a skillet on the stovetop. The only tricky part here is timing: You want the eggs to finish cooking just as the pudding is done baking so that you can quickly combine the two, turning the pudding into an edible plate for the eggs. Garnish with some snipped chives, a good sprinkle of salt and pepper, and, if you didn't happen to get enough beef drippings or other dairy fat from the night before, a generous spoonful of Hollandaise sauce over the top.

It is, for all intents and purposes, a savory Dutch baby. That sounds pretty delicious to me.

I was trying to come up with a good British-sounding name for these the other day. I think I've got it: Eggy puds. It hits the right notes: it's cutesy, it's only roughly descriptive of the actual dish, and it's got a vaguely dirty undertone to it. Let's go with it and make eggy puds happen, OK?