Home made rice pudding

So, both Arborio rice and sweet brown rice were on sale at Whole Foods this week in the bulk section. Needless to say, I’m diving into rice recipes. As it was, I felt like rice was highly underutilized as a breakfast staple in our home. So here I am…

I made some of the sweet brown rice with my red lentil chili tonight and it really worked. It was really sticky and I clearly didn’t “do” it right, but it worked.

But in the process of reading about how to make Arborio rice, the article noted that it’s starch content made it very creamy and therefore perfect for desserts (in addition to risotto).

Desserts… rice pudding… and one of THOSE articles pointed to rice pudding for breakfast…

Now they’re talkin’. I mean, really–how is this different from sweetened oatmeal? Heaven KNOWS it’s better than that sugar-only cereal you buy in the store! So I started cooking using the following recipe from : http://www.ehow.com/how_5062904_make-rice-pudding-scratch.html and I doubled the recipe in the hopes of having enough for dessert and breakfast. I used canned coconut milk (which is thicker than whole milk) and because the cans only gave me 3-1/2 cups of coconut milk, I added water to make the 5 cups I needed. Otherwise, I didn’t need substitutions. Worked wonderfully, although it would’ve been helpful for them to tell you to COVER the pot for most of the process (I cooked it uncovered after adding the egg/sugar mixture). Oh, and it presumably freezes well, fyi…

Instructions

Things You’ll Need

• 2 1/2 cups (600 ml) of whole milk
• 1/3 cup (66 grams) of uncooked long or short grain white rice
• 1/8 tsp. salt
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup (50 grams) dark brown sugar
• 1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
• 1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon
• Whisk
• Mixing bowl
• Medium saucepan
• Serving dish

1. • 1

     Combine the rice, salt, and milk in a medium saucepan and heat the mixture on the stove until it comes to a boil.

   • 2

     Reduce the heat to a simmer and mix the contents constantly for 20 minutes, or until the rice becomes tender.

   • 3

     Remove the rice mixture from the heat, but keep the element you used on and at a low heat.

   • 4

     Mix the egg and the brown sugar together with a whisk in a mixing bowl. While you are mixing, slowly add in a half cup of the rice mixture.

   • 5

     Add everything in the bowl to the rest of the rice mixture in the saucepan and place it back on the low heat, cooking it for another ten minutes.

   • 6

     Turn off the heat and remove the saucepan, transferring the rice pudding to a serving dish.

   • 7

     Mix in the vanilla and top the rice pudding with cinnamon.

In the end, nobody ate it for dessert because they didn’t move their arses to clean up. It is DELIGHTFULLY creamy and sweet without being TOO sweet. My thought, however, is that tomorrow morning when I reheat it, I’m going to stir in some organic pureed pumpkin from a can of it I opened today in an attempt to make a mock Pumpkin Spice Latte (apparently a Starbucks thing) that required 2 Tbl. of the can. :/ That with some pumpkin pie spice and I say “BREAKFAST!”.