Yorkshire Puddings • Gestational Diabetes UK (2024)

Lower carb Yorkshire Puddings. These beauties are not made with plain white flour, but ground arrowroot instead! This means you can now have your Yorkshire pudding alongside your roast potatoes #winning

So so light, golden and crispy, my family actually prefer these arrowroot Yorkshire Puddings to normal ones now and so they have been a low carb replacement on all our Sunday roast dinners!

What is ground arrowroot?

Arrowroot powder or flour is made from starches extracted from various tropical tubers, includingMaranta arundinacea,the arrowroot plant which are dried and then ground.

Ground arrowroot or arrowroot flour is a very fine white powder, much like corn flour. It is generally used as a thickener and creates a lovely shine in sauces and glazes.

Arrowroot is a good source of folate(vitamin B9), which is essential for development of the fetus during pregnancy and DNA formation. It also contains high amounts of phosphorus, iron, and potassium.

Arrowroot is odourless and has a neutral flavour meaning it can be used in many recipes, sweet or savoury alike.

Arrowroot is available to purchase in most larger supermarkets, typically the Dr Oetker Ground Arrowroot Sachets. However as arrowroot is usually only used in small amounts as a thickener, a pack only contains 6 tsp in total. Sainsbury’s stock their own larger pack of ground arrowroot.

Because I use arrowroot for cooking, I find it much easier and more economical to buy a much larger bag of ground arrowroot. You can find this in health food stores such as Holland & Barrett, or online. I purchase mine from Amazon in a 1kg bag which lasts a very long time.

But arrowroot is not low carb?

Arrowroot is actually high carb per 100g but is much more nutrient dense than many similar flours and thickeners. It has more dietary fibre, protein and calcium than other flours and is grain free making it naturally gluten free.

You also only need to use small amounts of arrowroot compared to other flours (approximately a third of what is used with plain wheat flour), so although high in carbs, a little goes a long way, reducing the total amount of carbs being consumed.

Arrowroot is easily digested and so is very gentle for those with sensitive tummies or conditions such as IBS. Arrowroot powder comprises of 32% resistant starch, which the body breaks down by forming a viscous gel when mixed with water and acts like soluble fibre in the gut.

All these things alongside the other ingredients used in this recipe help to create a lower carb, better-paired Yorkshire pudding which does not spike blood glucose levels.

In comparison, 1 large arrowroot Yorkshire pudding contains 4g carbs, compared to between 8g carbs in a small frozen Yorkshire pudding, or up to 20g carbs in a large homemade traditional plain flour Yorkshire pudding.

I came across ground arrowroot Yorkshire puddings via various keto dieters (Thank you Keto Sisters Caz & Vicki where I first saw them) and then tweaked this recipe very slightly to suit. Whilst I do not follow a ketogenic diet, but do eat low carb, and certainly do not recommend following a keto diet or extremely low carb diet in pregnancy, I do find some keto recipes which can be tweaked to be suitable and helpful within the GD diet. I couldn’t understand why arrowroot was acceptable to be used as a keto ingredient or even low carb, but after looking at the macro AND micronutrients of arrowroot alongside the knowledge that much less is needed to create recipes and testing my own blood glucose response, I found that this is a suitable ingredient and recipe to be used for the GD diet.