Frozen Yorkshire Puddings in the Air Fryer
Frozen Yorkshire puddings go in the air fryer straight from the freezer at 180°C for around 3–4 minutes, no oil and no preheat needed — single layer, spaced apart, and check them at three. That is the entire method. They come out taller and crisper than the oven manages, and you have not heated a whole oven for four small puddings. Larger or thicker ones want an extra minute or two; mini ones are done sooner than you think.
This is the single most useful thing my air fryer does, and I say that as someone who mainly bought it for chips.
The method, such as it is
- Straight from frozen. Do not defrost them. A defrosted Yorkshire pudding collapses into a sad little pancake and there is no coming back from it.
- No oil. They already have fat in them. Adding more gives you a greasy base and nothing else.
- Single layer, gaps between them. Air has to get round the sides or the walls stay pale and soft.
- 180°C for 3–4 minutes. Check at three. If your drawer is already hot from cooking something else, they will be at the fast end of that.
- Serve immediately. A Yorkshire pudding has a window of about four minutes at its best and then it starts going leathery. This is not the component you plate first.
Preheating is genuinely optional. A cold drawer costs you maybe thirty seconds. What matters far more is not stacking them.
Timings by size, and why your packet still wins
Every brand is slightly different and the sizes vary enormously — a supermarket “mini” is a mouthful and a “giant” is dinner. Use these as a starting point, then trust your eyes:
| What you’ve got | Temp | Rough time |
|---|---|---|
| Mini / canapé size | 180°C | 2–3 mins |
| Standard 4-packs and 12-packs | 180°C | 3–4 mins |
| Large or “giant” puddings | 180°C | 4–6 mins |
| Filled or toad-in-the-hole style | 160–170°C | longer, and check the middle is piping hot |
The one rule I would not bend: if the packet gives an air fryer time, start there. Manufacturers test their own product and yours may be thicker than mine. Where a packet only gives an oven time, roughly halve it and check early — that is the conversion that has worked on everything I have tried.
Filled ones are the exception to all of this. Anything with meat or gravy inside needs to be hot the whole way through, not just crisp on the outside, so drop the temperature and give it longer rather than blasting it.
What goes wrong
- Overcrowding. Piling them in is the number one cause of pale, floppy Yorkshires. Two batches of four beat one batch of eight, and the second batch takes barely two minutes because the drawer is already hot.
- Cooking them at oven temperature for oven time. An air fryer at 200°C for 12 minutes gives you a scorched shell and a hollow taste. Lower and shorter.
- Wandering off. The gap between “golden” and “the colour of a conker” is about ninety seconds. I have lost a batch to answering the door.
- Adding oil to the basket. Nothing sticks. They do not need it.
- Reheating them twice. A Yorkshire that has already been reheated goes brittle. Cook what you will eat.
Where they actually earn their keep
The obvious use is Sunday, and if you are doing a roast dinner on a budget the air fryer solves the eternal timing problem: the oven is full of potatoes and there is nowhere for the puddings to go. Do them in the drawer in the four minutes the meat is resting and everything lands hot at once, which is not a sentence I could write before I owned one.
But we eat them on Wednesdays too, and that is the boujee-on-a-budget bit:
- Gravy dinner. Sausages, mash, peas and two Yorkshires. Costs pennies more than sausage and mash and reads as a proper dinner to a five-year-old.
- Leftovers vehicle. A giant Yorkshire filled with leftover roast chicken and gravy turns Sunday’s carcass into Monday’s dinner without anybody noticing it is leftovers.
- Beige-plate diplomacy. A frozen Yorkshire is safe, familiar and beige, which makes it excellent cover for something less familiar arriving next to it. Same trick as the jacket potato — the acceptable thing carries the negotiation.
- Emergency starch. When the potatoes are not going to be ready and everyone is feral, four minutes is four minutes.
A pack of a dozen frozen Yorkshires is usually somewhere around £1.50–£2.50 (~$2–$3) depending on brand and size, and the supermarket own-brand ones air fry every bit as well as the named ones. I have tested this repeatedly and can report no meaningful difference once gravy is involved.
The bit about not switching the oven on
Here is the honest version of the energy argument, because it gets overstated online. An air fryer is not magic — it is a small fan oven. The saving is not that it uses less power per minute; it is that it uses power for four minutes instead of thirty-five, and it does not spend twelve of those minutes preheating an empty box the size of a washing machine.
For four Yorkshire puddings that difference is enormous in percentage terms and small in pennies. What it actually buys you is the willingness to bother — because “four minutes in the drawer” is a thing you will do on a Tuesday, and “preheat the oven” is a thing you will not. That is how a £2 (~$3) freezer staple ends up on the plate instead of dying of frostbite behind the peas.
FAQ
How long do frozen Yorkshire puddings take in an air fryer?
Around 3–4 minutes at 180°C for standard supermarket puddings, cooked straight from frozen in a single layer. Mini ones need 2–3 minutes and large or giant ones 4–6. Check at the earliest time — they go from golden to burnt very quickly.
Do I need to preheat the air fryer for Yorkshire puddings?
No. They cook so quickly that preheating makes almost no difference, though a drawer that is already hot from something else will get you to golden about thirty seconds sooner. Spacing them out matters far more than preheating does.
Can you put frozen Yorkshire puddings straight in the air fryer?
Yes, and you should. Frozen is the correct state to cook them from. Letting them defrost first makes them collapse and go dense, and there is no way to rescue one once it has sunk.
Do frozen Yorkshire puddings need oil in the air fryer?
No. They are made with fat already and nothing sticks to the basket. Adding oil gives you a greasy underside without improving the rise or the crispness.
Why are my air fryer Yorkshire puddings still soft?
Almost always overcrowding. If they are touching, the air cannot circulate round the sides and the walls steam instead of crisping. Cook fewer at a time with gaps between them — the second batch only takes a couple of minutes because the drawer is already up to temperature.
Can you reheat cooked Yorkshire puddings in an air fryer?
Yes, at 160°C for about a minute, and they come back surprisingly well. Only do it once, though: a Yorkshire that has been through two reheats goes hard and tastes of nothing.
