A good popover should be slightly crisp on the outside, tender and slightly custardy on the inside, and must be attractively puffy. There are specialty pans available for making them, but as with most specialty pans, it's hard to know whether buying them is worth the price. I don't make popovers very often, so I almost always use a regular muffin pan, as I did when I made eggnog popovers over the holidays. But the argument for using the specialty pans, neatly summed up in the above photo of the Fanatic Cook 's mile-high popovers, is compelling. The muffin-made popovers met the textural characteristics that are desirable in a popover, but they simply cannot compete when it comes to the towering heights that the specialty pan popovers do.
With this in mind, I would certainly consider investing in a popover pan if I made popovers more than once or twice a year. The results, clearly, are impressive and the pans don't take up that much room. I'll just keep them with my wide array of specialty and shaped cake pans....
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