Cheesy Toad In The Hole with Caramelised Onion Gravy

I’ve been wondering how to explain the concept of this Cheesy Toad In The Hole to you.

It’s a tricky one, a dish that may well have you pulling faces and asking me if I’ve gone mad (I haven’t! Not this time!!!). When raving about this dish to a couple of friends they’ve been skeptical, but let me tell you now, buddies: it really is up to the hype.

This dish was born of a trip to Gillray’s, a lovely steakhouse on the Southbank where I recently enjoyed a lunchtime boozy meatfest with my friend Neva. The pre-starter was not bread or olives as you might expect but the most enormous cheese-filled Yorkshire pudding (see below) served with a horseradish cream. It was genius, most moreish and delicious, but all the more important it was incredible taste that was doable at home without the help of a gastronomy lab.

I was totally sold.

The next week I was at my first attempt of the cheesy toad in the hole, plopping my chunks of cheese into the Yorkshire pudding batter. It was good, but I knew there was more to this idea.

And so I got to thinking. We spend our Christmases chowing down on all sorts of cheese with caramelised onion chutney: why not plant the cheese in a Yorkshire pud, make a caramelised onion gravy and create a dish that surely would be total cheesy sausagey gravy happiness?

My friends, I was not wrong.

The cheese is popped on the Yorkshire approximately five minutes before it’s finished cooking, meaning it’s delightfully gooey without going brown or crunchy. The sausages (use fat sausages over chipolatas – these will just overcook) are juicy and flavour the batter ever so slightly. The gravy, odd though it seems, when accompanied by the caramelised onions is just amazing and compliments the tangy cheddar.

This cheesy toad in the hole is not a recipe for Weightwatchers, that’s for sure. I like to keep my waistline down and mum points up by counting the Yorkshire as the only carb in this meal and bulking the meal up with veg rather than add mashed potato for example (I forced my children to eat, I mean accompanied mine with kale and carrots this evening). I’m not a purist when it comes to the gravy, either. Good old Bisto will do for this – the caramelised onions provide the overriding taste anyway.

Here’s Elfie and Hux tucking into their Cheesy Toad in the Hole. Elfie cleaned her plate, Hux was semi-interested before he started putting his carrots in his water glass. A success, then. 

Apologies that this was not a particularly handsome plate of food to photograph – I really need to work on a) my photography skills and b) not photographing food in the difficult light of dusk. You’ll just have to take my word for the fact this meal will give you one almighty mouth party.