Meatball Toad-in-the-Hole Recipe (2024)

Terrific! Be sure to get everyone around the table so you get the wow-factor of the steaming, puffed-up pudding right out of the oven. It was a bit of a project so I broke it into pieces. Made the batter in the morning. It did not suffer being made ahead, then stored covered in the fridge. Maybe even got some fermentation from the beer.At lunch: make meatballs, cover, store in fridge.Make gravy and finish at dinner. Lots of opening and closing oven, so add time if you need to; I did.

To make mincing the pancetta easier, put it in the freezer for about 15 minutes before chopping.

If you open the oven door too soon, the pudding will cool slightly due to the heat loss and deflate because it's still so soft. If you open the door at the very end of cooking (aka last five minutes), the pudding structure will have set / hardened up from the baking, and so it won't be as able to deflate. Think about pushing down on well-risen bread dough vs. a baked loaf. Both have lots of air holes but in bread the matrix has solidified, while in dough it's much more fluid / deflate-able.

Must really have to be super sneaky to get the gravy into the oven if you're not allowed to open the oven.

Grew up with as a mid week quick supper. With sausages and not meatballs. This is just another version of Yorkshire puddings which I make with beef. Easy easy. Just sounds complicated. But really easy.

Do not use Pyrex!!! Broke as I added gravy, huge mess lost time, ingredients and money

Could this be made with a non-dairy milk and vegan butter, or would that ruin the dish? What variety of non-dairy milk?

When I make meatballs (like a bunch of Melissa Clark's recipes for lamb/chicken/pork meatballs) usually I mix them ahead and form them and put the uncooked balls in the fridge until the next day. Makes weeknights much easier.

Oh I did this too, right before I poured in the stock I thought, "is this a good idea?", BAM! 30 minute clean-up of exploded pyrex. Stupid, I've read about that.

Prep seems a little complicated and frantic. Anyway to make components ahead and then complete for company?

weigh it! scale is a GREAT investment

The gravy is excellent, the pudding puffy and wonderful. The meatballs are fine,but I will use my own recipe for those next time. Family was not fond of the lemon zest in the meatballs, and there was a lot of bread in them. As written, this is not a week night dish! Perhaps if one made the batter ahead of time, or maybe even the meatballs. Otherwise, expect to spend a full two hours in the kitchen.

Has anyone tried making this with gluten free breads and flours and ale? It would take a lot of substitutions and the GF flours don't perform the same as wheat-based, but it sounds like a great dish. Celiac brings out the cook in you and the experimentation is great, but some things just don't bend well to the necessary substitutions. I don't even know what you could switch for the ale... .

A somewhat similar recipe was a winner in the Pillsbury BakeOff sometime in the 60s. I’ve searched for that recipe for years! That had mushroom gravey. Happy!

Do not use Pyrex,mine just broke adding gravy,lost all those ingredients and time plus I have a huge mess and little time to rebound

Even breaking into pieces was a hard job. It was very delicious. The gravy is amazing. But i probably won’t make anything but the gravy again

1 making the gravy on the stovetop, definitely speeds it up!

Update:I made this for the second time today, using Russell Brown's pork meatballs (found on the Great British Chefs website). Brown's recipe calls for bacon; I used leftover pancetta, but kept all other meatball ingredients the same. Pudding and gravy were made the same way as last time. The meatballs were delicious and worked well with the gravy and pudding.I'll be making this again soon!

Made the gravy and the pudding the night before, storing both in the fridge. I left the pudding in the glass bowl and covered it with a plate; some concoctions don't taste as well if put into plastic or metallic containers. The flavors came together in both, the pudding looked similar to the NYT cooking photo above, so I don't think it was too flat. Both pudding and gravy tasted wonderful. The meatballs turned out well, although the taste was a bit bland.

The gravy and the batter are exceptional, but I went with sausages instead of meatballs. Definitely prefer to make it with sausage as is traditional, but finding right sausages is tricky, Used small American breakfast links, but not quite right. Just found a place to order proper UK Cumberland sausages online, so hope these will hit the spot. Overall, the recipe is definitely a keeper!

Delicious and fun oven-to-table meal in the cast iron skillet. Notes: 1. Do not overmix the batter as I did, as it will get rubbery and won’t puff up. 2. Agree w spacing out the prep, because once the oven turns on you’re on the clock. 3. Meatball and gravy adjust easily to substitutions - such as bacon if you don’t have pancetta, or lager instead of ale, but the batter is more delicate.

This was just OK compared to the effort required to make it. The meatballs were bland—they need more oomph. And the pudding was OK tasting. I may have made a mistake as it was very cakey in the middle—but flaky at the edges. Anyway, I’ll chalk this one as an experience, but I doubt I’ll make this again.

Does this taste alright w bacon instead of pancetta?

I made this tonight largely because my kids liked the title. Some comments: First, I used bangers, mild English sausages, instead of making the meatballs. This saved a lot of time. Second, we found the batter too salty, so I would cut it down by a quarter or maybe even a half. Finally, the gravy was a bit thin, so I would reduce it on the stove top a bit next time. If you’re lucky enough to be making us in NYC, the Chipolata sausages at Myers of Keswick on Hudson Street would be great in this!

I followed Eric Phillips suggestion to make the batter in the morning, meatballs at lunch and put all together at dinner. It made for a less frantic kitchen. I browned the pancetta, onion & garlic before putting in the meatballs. I browned the meatballs in a skillet for ~15 to remove additional fat before putting in the batter. I made the grave in a skillet while the main dish was in the oven.

Make gravy stovetop

If made this again (unlikely, it was just OK) I would swap the gravy recipe for a standard mushroom gravy. The balsamic vinegar gives it an odd flavor. And it seemed like way too much bread in the meatballs.

Careful! I used a glass pan for the gravy and it (literally) exploded when I added the chicken stock mixture. Oops. After we cleaned up all the glass and onions we tried again and it was yummy. All the more tasty for the danger we endured in making it lol. USE A METAL PAN.

How would this work using a vegetarian meat ball? Morningstar or??

Recommend a BIG WARNING be attached to this recipe. I learned the VERY expensive, messy, dangerous and hard way. I didn't have a 9x13 tin pan and so I used glass. As I made the gravy portion, leaning into the oven and adding the flour, broth, beer mixture slowly to the hot onions (in a glass pan...duh) resulted in an EXPLOSION OF GLASS of both the pan AND MY OVEN DOOR. Had I removed the pan from the oven and done it on the counter, I probably would have major injuries from glass shrapnel.