Submit Your Rice Pudding Here!
I’ve received many requests to post rice pudding recipes from around the world. The trouble is I don’t know them. However many, many of you have described the rice puddings you grew up with, so…post them! Right here in the comment fields. Other readers will thank you for it. Oh, and please make sure that if your recipe calls for British-style “pudding rice” you indicate it. We don’t want more instances of North Americans boiling and boiling fruitlessly. Thank you.
What is “British-style ‘pudding rice'” please? Here is a recipe for “riz au lait”, the French version of rice pudding.
– 1 quart of milk (US measures)
– 1/2 c of round rice (pudding rice)
– 5 TB of sugar
– 1 vanilla bean
– peel of 1 orange, lemon or clementine (optional)
Preparation:
Bring the milk to a boil with the sugar, the vanilla bean (split it open first and scrape the seeds into the milk), and looong pieces of citrus peel, if using (leaving them long facilitates removing them at the end).
When the milk boils, add the rice and lower the heat so that the milk barely simmers; the rice should cook very slowly. Stir from time to time.
When the milk has boiled down to the point where it just covers the rice, turn off the heat and allow the rice to cool; it will finish absorbing the milk as it cools.
Serve at room temperature or cold. It can also be topped with a fruit sauce (pureed fruit that you strain and sweeten to taste) or chocolate sauce. Or you can incorporate grated dark chocolate into the rice while it’s still hot to make chocolate rice pudding!
Hey Jill!
Thanks for this. It’s a special short-grain rice that gives up its starch very easily…sort of like risotto rice, but it’s not the same thing. A few tablespoons will thicken about two cups of milk apparently (never seen the stuff myself).
– Joe
It’s not so much that the rice thickens all the milk, the long slow cooking also condenses it. There’s a “high tide” mark around the dish where the milk USED to come up to, which is considerably higher than the height of the pudding.
Thanks for the clarification!
– Joe
Could it be Glutinous Rice? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glutinous_rice
It is a rounder rice sometimes called Pearl Rice and can be found in asian stores (my local H-Mart carries it in multiple brands) as it is used to make sticky rice. It is exceedingly starchy.
That sounds like the rice we use here for rice pudding. Thanks Joe!
I’ll edit your comment to reflect that. Thanks Jill!
– J
I love rice pudding! My grnadma used to make it all the time when I was growing up (with literally every meal) and always served it warm. It was fairly plain as rice pudding goes – no vanilla, no cinnamon, no raisins. But we loved it. I had tried many times to recreat it with no success. One day my friend from Bangladesh shared how they make it. This is more of a method than a recipe. She didn’t even own measuring cups/spoons. She said they take a gallon of milk and condense it (I cheat and used canned condensed milk). Then she takes rice, soaks it a bit in water, drains it, crushes it with her hands, and then cooks it in the milk on the stovetop. When the rice is done, then you add the sugar. (She said this is important – that if you added the sugar sooner then rice wouldn’t get done. I don’t know as I’ve never tried to do it other than the way she said.) If it needs it I add more milk and/or water until the rice gets done enough. When she would make it, she spiced it with cardamom and often serve it a little thinner. I use cinnamon and vanilla because that’s how my husband prefers it and cook it until it’s very thick.
Wonderful, Denise! Thank you.
– Joe
Hi Joe, I have never commented before but I wanted to leave a little feedback for the rice pudding recipes since I spent a few hours making this for Diwali (India’s biggest festival – making rice kheer/pudding is traditional on this day)
To add to Denise’s comment, that’s pretty much how Indian kheer is made.Two notes – if using condensed milk, par boil the rice (Basmati works just fine) We don’t use completely cooked rice since we think it doesn’t absorb the milk as sugar as well as we’d like. Also, pressure cookers work great for reducing cooking time!
Finally, along with raisins we usually add slivered almonds and cashew nuts along with a little saffron, it is after all, a special occasion:)
Thank you very much, Natasha! Very nice to finally meet you!
– Joe
Mine is very rough and ready, using pudding rice or short grain glutinous rice. Sprinkle about half a cup of rice and a quarter of a cup of sugar on the bottom of an ovenproof dish. Add milk, maybe two pints? A LOT more than you think you need, anyway. Then add a little butter. Bake in a slow oven for two – three hours, stirring every so often to incorporate the skin that forms on the milk. This is part of the condensing process. After the final stir, when it looks nearly done (still sloppy but the rice grains reach the top of the milk), grate nutmeg over the top, then continue baking until the top is browned and the pudding creamy but not sloppy. Good hot with runny cream, also good cold (when it becomes quite stiff) spooned straight out of the dish into your mouth. The father of one of my childhood friends used to regularly make a huge batch in a roasting dish – ~2 inches deep by ~10 inches by ~16 inches. When you went to play at her place you could always have a big scoop of rice pudding to eat.
Excellent. Thanks Bronwyn!
– Joe
And I’ll also add Thai steamed rice pudding in case there are no Thais reading! I learned how to make this because it is so delicious.
Again with the glutinous rice. You can use either short grain, long grain, or black, but it must be glutinous. Take some rice (I used two cups I think to feed three adults and two teenagers) and soak it for several hours or overnight in water. Drain it and place it in a steamer over boiling water. The Thais use a special conical steamer that looks like an upside down witches hat, but I have had perfectly good results using an ordinary, metal, fits-over-the-pot steamer, with holes and a lid, lined with muslin. Just make sure your muslin (or linen tea towel) is not going to shed lint on the very sticky rice. Steam it until it’s cooked, recipes usually say about 20 minutes but I find I have to cook it longer than that. It turns into a fairly solid lump and is very chewy but has no crunch at all. Turn it out of the steamer into a bowl and keep warm.
In another pot, dissolve some sugar (couple of tablespoons or more depending on the sweetness of your tooth) in coconut cream (a tin maybe?) and heat it to near boiling. Stir the hot sweet coconut cream into the rice and leave it to be absorbed. I do this bit by bit, as I don’t really measure anything and am never sure if I have too much coconut cream. It does absorb a lot, but any extra can be poured over as a sauce.
It’s nice with the traditional mangoes, but also good with any tinned or bottled fruit, such as peaches, nectarines etc.
Hi,
Just to add to the earlier post by Denise, I am Bangladeshi and your method is very similar to our family recipe:
We soak the rice overnight, drain and then crush to almost a powder with a rolling pin.
The rice is then cooked in evaporated milk . I live in the UK so I just buy the Nestle Carnation tins, but in Bangladesh people spend hours cooking whole milk down.
Then, as described above the sugar is added only when the rice is fully cooked.
We cook it until it is quite thick, stirring all the time so it doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pan and burn.
It is then flavoured with saffron and rose water, and garnished with thinly slice toasted pistachio nuts, sometimes almonds and sultanas too. I think this stems from the influence of the Mughal empire in the Indian subcontinent.
We let it cool and then chill in the fridge, usually overnight because a) it can be made ahead and nobody wants to be slaving over it on the day of a dinner party and b) the saffron flavour seems to permeate and strengthen if left overnight.
We serve it chilled and and because it is cooked to a very viscous consistency it almost ‘sets’ in the fridge. Our family is very particular about not having a ‘liquid’ or ‘sloppy’ rice pudding – just our taste.
It is a very special dish in our family and served on important occasions and celebrations.
In the Indian subcontinent rice puddings have many names. The one I have described is Firni. But regional variations are go by Kheer and Payesh as well.
BD, I’m grateful! Thank you!
– Joe
Just remembered another one! I invented this one and used to make it a lot for taking to pot-lucks where there were vegans.
Again it’s not measured, but you can use any rice for it. It’s also quite fast, as rice puddings go.
Put a cup of rice, about quarter of a cup of sugar, juice of a lemon, grated rind of a lemon, two and a half cups of water, and half a cup of dried fruit (I use currants and sticky raisins) in a microwavable bowl.
Microwave uncovered on high for 16 minutes, stirring once in the middle. Cover and leave to finish absorbing.
Serve with runny cream to non-vegans, or by itself to vegans.
The sugar and fruit exudate make this a sticky pudding no matter what sort of rice you use. When I invented it I was actually trying to recreate a thing my stepmother made once at a cooking class. It was middle eastern and dry, so I was using a long grain rice. Turns out Mum’s recipe used pre cooked rice, saffron, lemon juice and fruit. I failed at that, but the experiment was still delicious.
I find the names of dried grapes vary by the country you’re in. These raisins come in a packet stuck together like a brick, they’re sort of golden and very sticky.
Thanks again!
– Joe
Yet another:
–Pre-cooked rice (1 cup dry rice, 2-1/2 cups water in pan with heavy bottom, cover, bring to boil, immediately shut off heat and let pan sit on stove, covered, for 15 to 20 minutes)
–¼ cup of butter
–3 cups of milk (or use a packet of powdered dry milk with three cups of water; tastes the same in the end)
–¾ cup flaked coconut
–2/3 cup brown sugar
–¾ teaspoon cardamom
–1 Tbsp vanilla
Mix together, bake, uncovered at 325. Stir from time to time to mix in the carmelized top and edges. The time varies from one to two hours… depends on your oven and on how carmelized you like it. I like the shorter baking time because it makes a more liquid pudding.
Excellent, Wally!
– Joe
Here is the closest I have come to the Indian rice pudding I love
2 C coconut milk
2 C milk
3 Tbl sugar
1 1/2 C Basmati rice, cooked
1/4 C raisins
1/2 tsp cardamom, ground
1/2 tsp cinnamon, ground
1/4 tsp rose water (optional)
1/4 C chopped cashews, toasted
1/4 C chopped pistachio nuts
Heat the coconut milk, milk and sugar to a nearly boiling in a large saucepan. Add rice, and simmer over low heat until the mixture thickens, about 10 minutes.
Stir in the raisins, cardamom and rose water, and cook for a few more minutes. Ladle into serving bowls, and garnish with cashews and pistachios.
Thanks, Frankly!
– Joe
I worked at a diner back in the 70s and one of my jobs was to make the rice pudding at 4 am every night.
Stir a (1 lb) box of Carolina rice into a gallon of milk in a steam table container. Heat in the steam table stirring frequently until the rice is soft and can be seen at the top of the milk. Stir in a tablespoon of salt, a cereal bowl of sugar (I guess 12 fl oz) and a tablespoon of vanilla. Beat 4 eggs in the cereal bowl, temper with some of the rice mixture, and stir it into the rice. Keep stirring til it starts to thicken ( almost immediately) then pour it into a shallow serving pan and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar. As it cools it attains a creamy consistency thats neither firm nor flowing. The waitresses coming on shift would put it in the dessert case and it would be gone by the time they left at 2pm. Some nights I made three pans of the stuff. Nowadays I make quarts, not gallons, and eat it all myself!
Terrific, Tereza! Thanks so much.
– Joe
This is nothing like the rice pudding I grew up with (you’d gag if I told you what that was like) but this is now my favorite:
Sherry Yard’s Forbidden Rice Pudding
1/4 c. jasmine rice
1/4 c Forbidden rice
1 1/2 c water
1/4 tsp salt
Wash rice well and bring to boil; simmer 35 minutes until all water absorbed.
2 pods green cardamom. Toast and grind.
1 1/2 c. milk
1 c unsweetened coconut milk
1/4 c sugar
Add them to the rice. Bring to boil; reduce heat and cook for 10 minutes. Stir in 1 tsp vanilla extract and refrigerate for 2 hours before serving.
Very cool, Brian. Thank you.
– Joe
Oooh, I love forbidden rice – it’s so glossy and black! We buy it at Whole Foods and always have several pounds of it – I’m going to try making rice pudding with it tonight! Thank you for the inspiration. 😀
Forbidden rice is basically black glutinous rice isn’t it? Interesting recipe – we always soak black glutinous rice overnight before cooking because its quite difficult to cook it through. I’ve never tried boiling it straight like this recipe 🙂
Pour some ghee into the bottom of the cooker base and saute 1 cup of basmati rice till aromatic. Add seeds from 2 cardomom pods, a piece cinnamon and saute for a few more minutes. Pour 1 -1/2cups milk in and close the lid. Steam cook without the whistle for 30minutes or till it is cooked to the consistency you are comfortable with. Sprinkle powdered nutmeg and serve. 🙂
Thanks so much, Malini!
– Joe
Very easy rice pudding (standard Dutch recipe):
100 gram pudding rice
500 ml milk (or coconut milk)
3 tbsp sugar
vanilla
Throw everything in a sauce pan, cook on low heat on the stovetop, stirring regularly, until the rice is cooked and the mixture has thickened (10-15 min).
Sushi rice can be used instead of pudding rice, then it will take a lot longer to cook, and it might need a bit extra milk.
I always add the sugar at the start of the cooking process, otherwise the core of the rice is not sweetened and I don’t like that. I haven’t found the sugar to interfere with the absorption of the milk/cooking of the rice.
Beautiful. Thank you, Ena!
– Joe
Hi Joe,
My mom’s side of the family is Danish. She grew up in Denmark and brought many Danish traditions with her to the US. One of my very favorite is our traditional Danish Christmas dinner. We celebrate it on Dec 24 with pork roast, caramelized potatoes, pickled red cabbage and ris a l’amande (rice pudding with almonds). The ris a l’amande is very special as one bowl will have a whole almond hidden in it and whomever gets the whole almond, gets a special present like chocolates or marzipan. It is usually customary to not let anyone know that you have found the almond so that everyone will keep enjoying the pudding. I have been known to eat all the bowls that have been left behind. It is delicious with a raspberry or cherry sauce over it. Here is the recipe that my mom gave me (and yes it cheats a bit with the rice but there is no pudding rice in the US):
1 1/2 cups milk
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup Minute Rice (instant long grain rice)
1/4 cup blanched almonds roughly chopped
1 whole blanched almond
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup whipping cream
Boil milk, salt, sugar and rice uncovered for 8 minutes. Fluff occasionally. Remove from heat, cover and let stand 10 minutes. Add chopped almonds and vanilla and cover. Chill thoroughly (I usually do this in the morning for an evening dinner). Before serving, whip the cream and fold into rice mixture. Divide between 8 or 9 bowls and hide the whole almond in one of the bowls. Serve with raspberry or cherry sauce.
Oh and don’t forget to pass any leftovers down to my end of the table!
Glad Jul!
Eva
Thanks so much, Eva!
– Joe
This sounds delicious! How much pudding rice would this use?
Which recipe, Jill?
Eva’s.
Hi Jill.
1/2 cup of minute rice yield 1 cup of cooked rice. I would say use enough dry pudding rice to yield no more than 1 1/2 cups of cooked pudding rice under normal cooking. In this recipe, the minute rice absorbs all of the milk and yields more than 1 1/2 cups of the cooked rice. You can always add more milk or whipped cream if it looks too dry. You can also substitute cooked rice as Joe does in his recipe.
Enjoy!
Eva
Southeast-Asian style steamed glutinous rice pudding:
Black or white glutinous rice 2 cups
Coconut milk in a box 270ml
Sugar 2 tbsp
4 ripe mangoes
1. Wash the rice and soak it in a large bowl with water to cover. Add 1/2 salt to it if using black glutinous rice – this makes it much easier to soften when steamed. Leave overnight.
2. Drain the water and rinse the rice. Put a steaming plate on top of a steaming rack in a wok – you can use an electric steamer too. Steam the rice on top of the plate – about 30 minutes for white glutinous rice and 1 hr 10 mins for black glurinous rice. Stir the mixture from time to time. The rice should be just cooked through and still chewy when done.
3. Remove from heat and stir in sugar and 1/2 cup coconut milk.
4. Using sheets of cling film, wrap the rice into a few cylinders and set aside for about 30 minutes for the rice to glue together as sticks.
5. Unwrap and serve with a little more coconut milk poured on top. Serve with slices of ripe fresh mangoes. If rice became too cool and hardened before serving, reheat gently in the microwave.
Thanks Henry!
I’m not sure if this counts as rice pudding – it sort of does, I suppose.
Sweet purple rice soup: http://food-locker.blogspot.com/2012/10/purple-rice-soup.html
Why not? Thanks again, Henry!
– Joe
I have literally gone on a quest to find a creamy, dreamy rice pudding recipe. I made rice pudding until it was coming out of my ears. This one by Gale Gand fits the bill. Easy to make and extremely delicious. (I like to warm up the leftovers a bit. I also eat it plain, sans raspberries.)
Gale Gand’s Arborio Rice Pudding
Ingredients
1/2 cup arborio rice
3 cups milk
1 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 vanilla bean, split
3/4 teaspoon almond extract
1/2 pint raspberries
Directions
In a large saucepan, place all the ingredients, except the almond extract and raspberries. Bring it to a gentle boil and then turn it down to a gentle simmer, stirring occasionally to keep it from sticking to the bottom, for about 30 to 40 minutes. Taste the rice to check for doneness. The rice should be very soft and plump.
Take the pudding off the heat and stir in the extract. Pour into dessert bowls and stir in some fresh raspberries. Serve immediately.
Suh-weet! Thanks so much, Lyna!
– Joe
This is Indian rice pudding sweetened with jaggery syrup.
Ingredients :
1/4 cup long grain rice
5 cups whole milk
1 cup grated dark jaggery / dark jaggery powder
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup clarified butter
4 cardamom pods
Cashews, Raisins
Pinch of saffron strands
Directions :
Wash long grain rice 2 or 3 times until the water almost runs clear. Soak the washed rice in water for 2 hours. Soak a pinch of saffron in 5 cups of milk. Drain the water, cook the rice and milk in a rice cooker. Be sure to stir at least once while the rice is still cooking to keep it from sticking to the bottom. Once the rice is done, transfer it to a serving bowl . Add crushed cardamom pods to the cooked rice and let it cool to room temperature. Meanwhile melt clarified butter in a small saucepan, add cashews / almonds and raisins , fry till golden brown. In another sauce pan, make a syrup with the cup of jaggery and 1/4cup water to one string consistency. Let this cool a bit and add to the cooked, warm rice along with fried nuts and raisins. Done.
You can adjust the quantity of jaggery to your taste.
I happen to have quite a bit if jaggery at the moment. This is excellent…thank you!
– Joe
Edit :
Ingredients –
1/2 cup long grain rice
I forgot to mention, a cup of jaggery makes a really sweet pudding so please adjust it to your taste.
Understood!
Cheers,
– Joe
Hi! As a Spanish ex-pat living in the UK I often long for the traditional rice pudding from the green mountains of Asturias, a land of milk cows…
The recipe calls for very little short-grain rice, about 150g, that is boiled with as much water and a pinch of salt. When the rice “opens”, pour in around 2.5 litres of full fat milk (3-4% fat content), a spiral of lemon peel and a cinnamon stick. Lower to the minimum heat and stir every now and then to avoid sticking to the bottom (mine always does). In about 2-3 hours the rice will have thickened and is smelling like caramel. It’s only then that the sugar is added, as someone said (about 200g), and a generous pat of butter, but in Asturias it is also traditional to pour in a splash (or two or three) of “anís” or aniseed liquor (a bit like sambucca or ouzo).
The rice is then distributed in little bowls (or traditionally in soup plates) and let to cool. Then, either ground cinnamon is sprinkled on top or sugar, which is then caramelised like creme caramel. It is always eaten cold, never hot.
It is also compulsory that every single Asturian person will claim that their mama’s is the best rice pudding in the world!
But of course, Marga! Thanks for taking the time to share this with me.
– Joe
The very best rice pudding is the one in Richard Sax’s Home Desserts.
Short grain cooked brown rice simmered with milk for 30 mins then maple syrup & vanilla for a further 15mins. It is then cooled in a baking dish, filmed with heavy cream and baked for 15-20 mins to form a delicious skin.
Nothing else comes close.
Thanks Patsy!
I forgot the golden raisins which are added with the maple syrup!
Reader Ingrid writes:
Since you wrote about rice pudding, here is my recipe for a traditional Dutch pastry called “rijstevlaai”. A vlaai can be baked with several fillings. Among the most traditional are plum jam (the dark stuff), jam from dried apricots, sweet cherries, gooseberries and of course rice pudding.
If you go for jam or fruit, the pastry will be covered with a diamond pattern. This is a piece of cake with my favourite kitchen tool: http://www.amazon.de/bavendo-Gitterstanze-Kunststoff-2-teilig-Durchmesser/dp/B005E80RH4/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1354984353&sr=8-4.
If you choose to make a rijstevlaai, or one with vanilla pudding and crumbles, you won’t need the same amount of dough for you’re not covering the pastry with a diamond pattern. However, I stick to this recipe and make rolls or smaller vlaais with any left over dough.
Vlaai
375 g flour
40 g butter
20 g fresh yeast or 1 package of instant yeast
40 g sugar
3 g salt
2 dl lukewarm milk
Over the years I have adapted it a bit, setting out with 250ml lukewarm milk, in which I melt the butter, and adding flour when needed as I knead by hand. This results in a smoother dough and as a side effect I’m more likely to get rolls. This is prepared like any yeast dough, rolled out to a height of 1/2 cm at best and baked at 200C (preheated) for 20 to 25 minutes in a form like the ones in your Gear Essentials, Baking Part 2 at the bottom right corner. I use one with a diameter of 28cm and a removable bottom.
For rijstevlaai, the sides should not be too low. You can make them higher with tin foil. With a fork make small holes in the dough. Fill the form with rice pudding. The original recipe calls for
1 l milk
120 g pudding rice (the British kind/risotto rice)
80 g sugar
1 pinch of salt
This is cooked for about an hour and, only when really too thin, thickened with 10 g custard powder. Add a bit of vanilla.
Now whip 3 egg yolks with 30 g sugar. Whip the egg whites to stiff peaks. Stir half of the yolks into the rice pudding and fold in half of the whites. Fill half of your rice pudding into the form. Now fold in the rest of your egg yolks and egg whites and fill the remaining rice pudding into the form. Bake your rijstevlaai in a 200C preheated oven on the lower middle rack for 25 to 30 minutes. You don’t want it to get too dark. Let it cool down a bit before removing the form. This is where the removable bottom comes in handy. The vlaai should be completely cool before it is cut.
You can serve the rijstevlaai as is, or (yes!yes!) go for the de luxe version and top it with cream and shaved chocolate. I understand that you do not have our kind of pudding rice, Joe, but you want the filling to be somewhat moist and smooth, not dry but not too thin either, just slightly firm. When cut, the filling should keep its form and the dough should be soft and rather thin. Whoever likes rice pudding, will love this pastry.
Thank you Joe, for being out there and writing about pastry the way you do. Sometimes I think you’re actually writing about loving life. Keep it up!
Best whishes,
Reader Ingrid from Germany