Rice pudding
Rice pudding.
You either like it or you don't, there aren't many people who fall in between.
I happen to love rice pudding. I've tried lots of different recipes, and they all have their pluses and minuses. Rice pudding recipes seem to fall into four overlapping categories: those that use raw rice vs. those that use cooked rice, and those that are cooked on the stove top vs. those that are baked in the oven. Up till now I've shown a distinct preference for raw rice + cooked on stove top. And I had a pretty good stove top rice pudding recipe that everyone agreed was quite nice, but it wasn't, you know, awesome.
So I decided to figure out what, to me, would make a truly outstanding rice pudding, and see if I could either improve my current recipe or find a better one.
What, exactly, was I looking for in taste and texture? Well, to me, rice pudding should taste like the rice and dairy. Eggy/custardy isn't really the right flavor profile, at least to me, because it interferes with the rice and dairy flavors. For texture, the rice should be obvious, but it shouldn't be grainy or crunchy. I am partial to a medium thickness, though I know some people like it quite thin, or quite thick.
Bearing that in mind, what kind of rice would be the best choice? Rice, of course, comes in many different shapes, forms, and levels of processing. I've never, ever liked the flavor or texture of precooked/par cooked/"minute" rice, so as a matter of personal preference I stick with raw rice. Beyond that, I think one of the keys to good rice pudding is choosing a rice that has the right balance of starch.
The starch in rice is made up of two distinct molecules: amylose and amylopectin. These two starches occur in different ratios in different rices: the longer the grain of rice, the more amylopectin; the shorter the grain, the more amylose. At cooler temperatures, amylose stays gelatinous, while amylopectin crystallizes. This is why long grain rice is "crunchy" out of the refrigerator, but if you heat it back up it softens up again. Shorter grain rice--like, say, sushi rice--will stay tender even if chilled.
Since I usually serve my rice pudding chilled, and I like a pudding with distinct rice, but not crunchy/grainy, I stick with medium-grain rice. It has enough amylopectin to keep the rice structure through long cooking, but has enough amylose to stay tender even when chilled.
That covers the rice. What about the dairy component? Since I think "eggy" is the wrong flavor profile for rice pudding, I was sticking with recipes that relied on the rice itself to thicken things. Good milk, therefore, is a distinct requirement. I've tried various fat-levels of milk and I've found that you can make a perfectly good rice pudding with low fat (1%) milk. Skim milk is even okay in a pinch, though it'll turn out a pudding that's a little...wimpy, for lack of a better word. Whole milk rice pudding tastes the same to me as low fat milk rice pudding, and since I never have whole milk but always have 1% milk on hand...
Rice and dairy: check. What about other flavors? Every culture that eats rice has a variation on rice pudding, and they all use different spices, seasonings, and other ingredients to customize and vary the recipe. Surely one of the finest rice puddings in the world is kheer, which is flavored with cardamom, saffron, almonds, and even raisins and rosewater. Because the flavors of rice and dairy are so subtle, they make a great canvas for other flavors. But I like to keep it simple, and that means sticking with one or two spices. I typically use cinnamon and that's it. Sometimes I'll add vanilla, too.
I typically use either sugar or a combination of sugar and honey to sweeten my rice pudding. Some recipes call for no sweetener, and instead sweeten the pudding with sweet toppings. That's pretty good too, but I prefer just plain white sugar.
As for cooking method, my recipe was basically cooking medium grain rice in milk with some sugar and a stick of cinnamon. You barely simmer it for an hour or so, stirring frequently if not constantly, and you end up with a pretty good rice pudding. Conceptually it's kind of like a sweet risotto, and I'd adapted the technique from kheer recipes (some of which can be downright medieval in their stirring requirements).
And then I came across a recipe for "arroz con leche" in Mark Bittman's book "The Best Recipes in the World." Here was a recipe that had five ingredients: raw rice, whole milk, a cinnamon stick, a bit of sugar, and a pinch of salt. Bittman's recipe is cooked in a slow oven, which gives not only the rice a chance to thicken things up but also reduces the milk and concentrates the flavors. And because the oven provides steady but indirect heat, stirring constantly was no longer a problem, which freed me from standing in front of the stove for an hour.
Here at last was the recipe I had sought. Its simple flavors were all about the rice and the dairy, with cinnamon as a backdrop. The texture was perfect. And it was easy as pie--easier, even, especially for those of us who can't make pastry to save our lives--and it adapts to just about any regional or ethnic variation.
Here, then, is Bittman's recipe. (The book is a great book, if you like a casual take on international cuisine, too. I recommend it.)
Arroz con Leche (Rice Pudding with Cinnamon)
Makes: 4 servings
Time: About 2.5 hours, largely unattended.
1/4 to 1/3 cup rice
1/3 to 1/2 cup sugar
Small pinch of salt
1 quart whole milk
1 cinnamon stick
Ground cinnamon for garnish
Preheat the oven to 325F. Combine everything except the ground cinnamon garnish in a 3- or 4- quart casserole, oven-proof saucepan, or dutch oven. Stir a couple of times, and place uncovered in the oven.
Every 30 minutes, stir the pudding. A film will develop, starting out completely white but gradually becoming more and more caramel-colored. Stir the film into the pudding each time. You'll notice also that the milk is reducing and concentrating as well, heading in the direction of dulce de leche, though you never actually get anywhere near the caramel stage, but you do get that amazing concentrated dairy flavor.
After two hours (4 stirrings), begin checking the pudding every 10 minutes. The pudding will thicken considerably when it cools, so remove it from the oven while it is still thinner than the consistency you would like. You will probably overcook the pudding the first time through, I certainly did. But no worries, once it was cool I just added a bit of milk and returned it to the thickness I was looking for. This is a very forgiving recipe.
Remove the cinnamon stick and serve garnished with ground cinnamon. The pudding is good warm, room temperature, or cold straight out of the fridge. I actually skip the cinnamon garnish; I like it just plain. But I have had the pudding with cubed fresh mango or sliced bananas on top.
Bittman lists several variations on the recipe:
You either like it or you don't, there aren't many people who fall in between.
I happen to love rice pudding. I've tried lots of different recipes, and they all have their pluses and minuses. Rice pudding recipes seem to fall into four overlapping categories: those that use raw rice vs. those that use cooked rice, and those that are cooked on the stove top vs. those that are baked in the oven. Up till now I've shown a distinct preference for raw rice + cooked on stove top. And I had a pretty good stove top rice pudding recipe that everyone agreed was quite nice, but it wasn't, you know, awesome.
So I decided to figure out what, to me, would make a truly outstanding rice pudding, and see if I could either improve my current recipe or find a better one.
What, exactly, was I looking for in taste and texture? Well, to me, rice pudding should taste like the rice and dairy. Eggy/custardy isn't really the right flavor profile, at least to me, because it interferes with the rice and dairy flavors. For texture, the rice should be obvious, but it shouldn't be grainy or crunchy. I am partial to a medium thickness, though I know some people like it quite thin, or quite thick.
Bearing that in mind, what kind of rice would be the best choice? Rice, of course, comes in many different shapes, forms, and levels of processing. I've never, ever liked the flavor or texture of precooked/par cooked/"minute" rice, so as a matter of personal preference I stick with raw rice. Beyond that, I think one of the keys to good rice pudding is choosing a rice that has the right balance of starch.
The starch in rice is made up of two distinct molecules: amylose and amylopectin. These two starches occur in different ratios in different rices: the longer the grain of rice, the more amylopectin; the shorter the grain, the more amylose. At cooler temperatures, amylose stays gelatinous, while amylopectin crystallizes. This is why long grain rice is "crunchy" out of the refrigerator, but if you heat it back up it softens up again. Shorter grain rice--like, say, sushi rice--will stay tender even if chilled.
Since I usually serve my rice pudding chilled, and I like a pudding with distinct rice, but not crunchy/grainy, I stick with medium-grain rice. It has enough amylopectin to keep the rice structure through long cooking, but has enough amylose to stay tender even when chilled.
That covers the rice. What about the dairy component? Since I think "eggy" is the wrong flavor profile for rice pudding, I was sticking with recipes that relied on the rice itself to thicken things. Good milk, therefore, is a distinct requirement. I've tried various fat-levels of milk and I've found that you can make a perfectly good rice pudding with low fat (1%) milk. Skim milk is even okay in a pinch, though it'll turn out a pudding that's a little...wimpy, for lack of a better word. Whole milk rice pudding tastes the same to me as low fat milk rice pudding, and since I never have whole milk but always have 1% milk on hand...
Rice and dairy: check. What about other flavors? Every culture that eats rice has a variation on rice pudding, and they all use different spices, seasonings, and other ingredients to customize and vary the recipe. Surely one of the finest rice puddings in the world is kheer, which is flavored with cardamom, saffron, almonds, and even raisins and rosewater. Because the flavors of rice and dairy are so subtle, they make a great canvas for other flavors. But I like to keep it simple, and that means sticking with one or two spices. I typically use cinnamon and that's it. Sometimes I'll add vanilla, too.
I typically use either sugar or a combination of sugar and honey to sweeten my rice pudding. Some recipes call for no sweetener, and instead sweeten the pudding with sweet toppings. That's pretty good too, but I prefer just plain white sugar.
As for cooking method, my recipe was basically cooking medium grain rice in milk with some sugar and a stick of cinnamon. You barely simmer it for an hour or so, stirring frequently if not constantly, and you end up with a pretty good rice pudding. Conceptually it's kind of like a sweet risotto, and I'd adapted the technique from kheer recipes (some of which can be downright medieval in their stirring requirements).
And then I came across a recipe for "arroz con leche" in Mark Bittman's book "The Best Recipes in the World." Here was a recipe that had five ingredients: raw rice, whole milk, a cinnamon stick, a bit of sugar, and a pinch of salt. Bittman's recipe is cooked in a slow oven, which gives not only the rice a chance to thicken things up but also reduces the milk and concentrates the flavors. And because the oven provides steady but indirect heat, stirring constantly was no longer a problem, which freed me from standing in front of the stove for an hour.
Here at last was the recipe I had sought. Its simple flavors were all about the rice and the dairy, with cinnamon as a backdrop. The texture was perfect. And it was easy as pie--easier, even, especially for those of us who can't make pastry to save our lives--and it adapts to just about any regional or ethnic variation.
Here, then, is Bittman's recipe. (The book is a great book, if you like a casual take on international cuisine, too. I recommend it.)
Arroz con Leche (Rice Pudding with Cinnamon)
Makes: 4 servings
Time: About 2.5 hours, largely unattended.
1/4 to 1/3 cup rice
1/3 to 1/2 cup sugar
Small pinch of salt
1 quart whole milk
1 cinnamon stick
Ground cinnamon for garnish
Preheat the oven to 325F. Combine everything except the ground cinnamon garnish in a 3- or 4- quart casserole, oven-proof saucepan, or dutch oven. Stir a couple of times, and place uncovered in the oven.
Every 30 minutes, stir the pudding. A film will develop, starting out completely white but gradually becoming more and more caramel-colored. Stir the film into the pudding each time. You'll notice also that the milk is reducing and concentrating as well, heading in the direction of dulce de leche, though you never actually get anywhere near the caramel stage, but you do get that amazing concentrated dairy flavor.
After two hours (4 stirrings), begin checking the pudding every 10 minutes. The pudding will thicken considerably when it cools, so remove it from the oven while it is still thinner than the consistency you would like. You will probably overcook the pudding the first time through, I certainly did. But no worries, once it was cool I just added a bit of milk and returned it to the thickness I was looking for. This is a very forgiving recipe.
Remove the cinnamon stick and serve garnished with ground cinnamon. The pudding is good warm, room temperature, or cold straight out of the fridge. I actually skip the cinnamon garnish; I like it just plain. But I have had the pudding with cubed fresh mango or sliced bananas on top.
Bittman lists several variations on the recipe:
- lemon zest, a pinch of saffron threads, or teaspoon of ground cardamom added at the beginning
- a couple of tablespoons of raisins and/or slivered pistachios stirred in a the end
- a tablespoon of rose water or orange-flower water stirred in at the end (the cinnamon stick would be optional with this variation)
- place in ramekins, top with a bit of sugar, and broil to produce a crust like in creme brulee (that would really gussy it up, I think)
- Scandinavian style: double the milk, use only 1/4 cup of sugar. Do not bake, but rather cook covered over low heat on top of the stove, stirring occasionally, for about an hour or until the rice is tender. Serve warm with fresh, whipped, or sour cream.
- substitute some or all of the milk with coconut milk. Also good with crystallized or fresh ginger.