Tuesdays with Dorie—Arborio Rice Pudding

This week is rice pudding, one of my all-time favorite desserts. I can't believe I used to groan whenever my mom made it when I was growing up. I was missing out. It has since become a Christmas Eve traditional dessert in our family. One bowl gets an almond in it, and that person gets to open a gift. Now that there are a few kids around the table, somehow the almonds end up in their bowls.

Rice

Clockwise from top:
wild, Arborio, Basmati, converted, sushi, white
These are all the bags of rice I had in my cupboard. I usually use Basmati, wild or converted (which means partially cooked) as a side dish and always converted for the rice pudding recipe I usually use. I have sushi rice (also called Japanese rice) on hand for the very rare time I try to make sushi at home.

Since I had all these bags on hand, I thought I'd make four batches of rice pudding using Arborio, Basmati, converted, and sushi rice.

Here are my surprising results:
1. My favorite was the Basmati, but it had a more grown-up appeal. It had a herbal flavor, and I'd love to try it with lavender someday.
2. Sushi rice was my next favorite. It has a subtle flavor that picks up the sweetness of the pudding nicely.
3. Arborio, like the Sushi rice, was nice but not flavorful enough.
4. I didn't like the converted version. It was too bland. Too much like a side dish of rice.

Boiling four bowls of rice and milk at once is not recommended. If you turn your back for a second, milk will boil over and be all over your stovetop. And you might burn your finger on the hot handle of one while another boils over. Not that this happened to me this week. Just sayin'.

Recipe

Ingredients:
¼ cup Arborio rice
2 cups water
3¼ cups whole milk
¼ cup sugar
1½ tsp or 1 tbsp vanilla
1½ or 3 ounces bittersweet chocolate
You can find the recipe for Arborio Rice Pudding in the book Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan or here. To see how the rest of the TWD group fared with this week's recipe, click here and then click on each blogger! Thanks to Isabelle from Les gourmandises d’Isa who chose the recipe for this week.

Update: There is a typo in the cookbook. The cooking time should be 55 minutes (not 30 minutes).

Recipe for Creamy Oven-Baked Rice Pudding
from Today's Parent

This is my favorite rice pudding recipe.

⅓ cup rice
3 cups hot milk
¼ cup sugar
2 tablespoons butter
¼ cup raisins
1 teaspoon vanilla
½ teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat oven to 250°F. Butter a casserole dish. Stir in rice, hot milk, sugar, and butter. Pour into greased casserole dish. Bake uncovered for 2½ hours, stirring every half-hour. Add raisins in the last half-hour. Remove pudding from oven. Stir in vanilla and cinnamon.

Tasting Notes
I halved the Arborio recipe and made half with bittersweet chocolate and half with vanilla extract. I've never had chocolate rice pudding before, and it was delicious. But I prefer the traditional rice pudding. Although this recipe was good, I like my tried-and-true version of rice pudding. It's made in a slow oven, so no chance of it boiling over. And, I've learned that I'd rather use sushi or Arborio rice in my version next time. I'll save the Basmati version for more experimental eaters.

"When they didn't give him boiled mutton, they gave him rice pudding, pretending it was a treat."
Charles Dickens, 'The Schoolboy's Story' (1853)

Recipe for Next Week (November 25)
Thanksgiving Twofer Pie on page 321 chosen by Vibi from La casserole carrée.

My Bucket List

Go to Arborio, Italy.

A Meme
Sweet Diva from The Sugar Bar tagged me with a random facts meme. I was supposed to come up with seven, but here are five. Feel free to play along.

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