Baked Rice Pudding
Two hours in a low oven and almost no work, and the skin on top is the reason to make it rather than something to skim off.
This is the slowest recipe on the site and the one that asks least of you. Everything goes in a dish, the dish goes in a low oven, and nothing is stirred.
Short-grain rice, because it has the starch. Long-grain gives you rice sitting in warm milk, which is a different and worse thing.
Ingredients
| Amount | Ingredient |
|---|---|
| 1/2 cup | short-grain pudding rice |
| 4 cups | whole milk |
| 1/3 cup | sugar |
| 1 tbsp | butter |
| 1 | strip of lemon zest or a bay leaf |
| 1 pinch | salt |
| — | grated nutmeg |
Method
- Heat the oven to 300°F.
- Butter a shallow dish. Wide and shallow gives more skin; deep gives more pudding. Choose accordingly.
- Rice, milk, sugar, salt and the zest or bay into the dish. Stir once.
- Dot the butter over the top and grate nutmeg across the whole surface.
- Bake two hours without touching it. The skin forms in the last forty minutes and breaking it early means it does not come back.
- Rest fifteen minutes. It thickens a lot as it cools.
Notes
- Whole milk. Skimmed gives a thin pudding and no skin at all.
- Two hours is not padding. At ninety minutes the grains are still separate and chalky in the middle.
- Cold leftovers eaten standing at the fridge is, by long tradition, the correct way to finish it.
Questions
Can I do it on the stove?
Yes, forty minutes of near-constant stirring. You lose the skin, which is most of the point.
Can I use cream?
Replace half a cup of the milk with cream. More than that and it splits.
Jam?
On the side, so the skin stays intact until it reaches the bowl.