Chocolate, Marmalade and Ginger Steamed Pudding | Guest Recipes | Nigella's Recipes (2024)

FAQs

How long do you steam a Christmas pudding for? ›

Boil or oven steam the puddings for 8 hrs, topping up with water as necessary. Remove from the pans and leave to cool overnight. When cold, discard the messy wrappings and re-wrap in new baking parchment, foil and string. Store in a cool, dry place until Christmas.

Aside from the traditional method in a saucepan, there are lots of ways to steam a pudding. You can use a pressure cooker, microwave or bake in the oven in a water bath.

Pour in enough hot water to come halfway up the side of the pudding basin. Set over a medium heat and bring to the boil. Cover the pan with a tight-fitting lid, lower the heat to a gentle simmer and leave to steam for 2½ hrs, topping up with boiling water if the level gets too low.

Wrap in foil and reheat at 300ºF (150ºC) for an hour or until hot. To reheat on the stovetop, remove wrappings and place the pudding in the original mould. Cover tightly. Set pudding mould on a trivet in a large saucepan and steam 3/4 - 1 hour or until hot.

Ideally we would suggest that when the pudding is made it is steamed for 8 hours (the combined time of the first and second steamings) as the steaming is important for the flavour of the pudding. The pudding can then be microwaved to reheat it on Christmas Day.

Resist lifting the lid of the steaming pan for the first 30 minutes; like baking a cake, the drop in temperature could cause the pudding to collapse. However after this time, do check on the pudding regularly to make sure that the pan does not boil dry.

As for all puddings, it should be stored in a cool, dry place until Christmas Day. For the US our preference would be to use Pyrex mixing bowls for steaming Christmas puddings.

If you don't have a lipped pudding basin to hand, you can use any lipped heatproof bowl. To demonstrate this, I have used a stainless steel bowl with a very small lip in the photos for this article.

Nigella suggests using a plastic pudding basin with a clip-on lid as these are easy to use and not too expensive. If you have difficulties finding a pudding basin then a Pyrex bowl, or similar heatproof glass bowl, could be used. However the shape is different so you will have a wider, squatter pudding.

The lengthy cooking time is essential in order to achieve the intensity and depth of flavour. That said, the pudding can be steamed in stages — say, in two three-hour stints — and, once cooked, it should be stored in a cool, dark place, ready for reheating on the big day.

Why is my Christmas pudding dry? ›

There is also a slight risk that the puddings may be a little dry in comaprison with the regular Christmas pudding. As steaming is a gentle, humid method of cooking this may be less of a concern but you could try "feeding" the puddings with a little alcohol (if freezing, before you freeze them) to help them along.

If the pudding has a very big dip in the centre then it could be that it was not cooked quite thoroughly enough and this could happen if the water was not kept at a brisk simmer or if the pan was allowed to boil dry at any point.

If you have to steam the pudding in advance then you should let it cool fully uncovered. When the sponge is completely cold cover the basin tightly in a double layer of clingfilm (plastic wrap) and keep in a cool place, or the fridge, for up to 5 days.

The pudding is at its very best when freshly cooked as the sponge is light and moist. For this reason we prefer not to make the sponge in advance, as it can become denser as it cools. The sauce can be made up to a week ahead and stored in the fridge, or up to 3 months ahead and frozen.

A Christmas pudding is quite a dense mixture and needs long gentle cooking to prevent the outside burning before the inside is cooked. The same theory holds for reheating a pudding as it will take some time for the pudding to heat right through to the centre.

Most Christmas puddings are made with suet (shredded beef fat) and this tends to take longer to melt than butter, so the pudding needs a long cooking time to make sure that the fat has melted and combined properly with the other ingredients.

Our answer. Nigella's Ultimate Christmas Pudding (from NIGELLA CHRISTMAS) has a two-stage steaming method. So the larger version of the pudding should be steamed for 5 hours initially, and then 3 hours on the day of serving.