Soup's Best Friend: The Popover

It snowed here yesterday - and not just a little. At the height of the storm (before it began to melt), we had a good couple inches of the white stuff. Now I'm not one of those cold weather and winter haters, but I'm not sure I'm ready for all the ice and snow just yet. However, with the colder temperatures comes two welcome additions: soup and popovers.

Once spring hits, all my soup recipes go into storage. Then, when the air turns crisp in the fall, my menu expands instantly when I pull them out again. I love cooking hot dinners when it's cold outside. So comforting, so satisfying - and so cheap. But there will be plenty of time to share all those soup recipes - what I really want to write about is one of my favorite soup accompaniments: the delicious popover. And did I mention that they're ridiculously easy and affordable to make?

I came across this recipe in my favorite, now-defunct magazine, Wondertime (stupid recession - even though it's been months since the last issue, I'm still bummed that it got shut down). I'd never had a popover before, but they looked yummy and the recipe looked simple, so I tried it out. What I love about this recipe is the ingredients are so basic - just a few kitchen staples. Milk, eggs, flour, salt, butter. That's it. My husband I were hooked from the first time I made them. In fact, we skipped the soup and just had popovers for dinner last night. Anyway, here's the recipe:

You'll need:

2 eggs at room temperature
1 cup milk at room temperature
3/4 cup flour at room temperature (couldn't resist - I'm such a nerd.)
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt (use half the amount if you're using table salt)
3 tablespoons butter

Heat oven to 450 degrees. Mix together eggs, milk, flour, and salt (lumpy batter is fine). Cut the butter into 12 pieces and put a piece in a each cup of a 12-cup muffin tin. Put the tin in the oven and let the butter melt for a couple minutes. Take the pan out and fill each cup about halfway with batter. Bake the popovers until they're brown and puffy, about 15 minutes. Only open the oven to take them out - if you open and check on them, the popovers will deflate. Serve immediately.

Don't fight the cold weather that's coming. Celebrate it with a popover (or four). Make them this Saturday, along with a big pot of soup, for your little ghosts and goblins before they go trick-or-treating. Ahhhh...you gotta love the simple (and inexpensive) joys of the season.