This is a really lovely featured post : We love toad in the hole at The Ana Mum Diary house. We make ours though with veggi sausages and my famous luki luki batter, which rises brilliantly! Enjoy….
When I was younger I used to think it was … Well you can probably work out the rest of this sentence for yourself. To be honest, my mother didn’t help. Rather than informing me of the mundane truth – that the recipe was simply sausages in a Yorkshire pud with veg and gravy – she suggested it was made with the legs of giant toads captured from around the pond in our neighbour’s garden. When I was older I worked out that this was a fallacy from the fact there were no bones in the “leg” when I ate it. This was shortly before I left home.
As I continued my interest in toad in the hole, I did make some disturbing discoveries. For example, some people use sausages wrapped in bacon. That’s akin to a Scotsman wearing pants under his kilt – something that just shouldn’t happen! Even more worryingly, I found a photo of a half-eaten one. How can anyone not finish a toad in the hole? It’s just not normal behaviour!
I did also find that, back in the 1800s, it was often made with “any bits and pieces of stewed beef”. And during the war years, Spam often took the place of sausages!
My investigations even took me to a Grandmothers’ Cookery Club in North Yorkshire. My aim was to ask these true experts for “the perfect toad in the hole recipe”. It was going pretty well until one member suggested she preferred chicken, rather than onion, gravy. I’ve never even seen fencing with hatpins before!
So what are the secrets of a proper, traditional, toad in the hole? Well, I think you have to start with succulent, high quality, shoulder pork sausages. You cook these in proper Yorkshire Pudding batter, and add onion gravy (if that’s your choice). Then, eat heartily with butter mash and veggies of your own choosing!
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