Arborio Rice Pudding - Chocolate & Chai (TWD)

Rice pudding is on the menu for this week’s Tuesdays With Dorie. I was looking forward to making this recipe, selected by Isabelle of Les gourmandises d’Isa. Rice pudding is the epitome of comfort food, and for me it is best eaten when curled up on the couch with my favorite blanket and catching up on TIVO (Top Chef, House, Grey’s Anatomy marathon, anyone?).

The recipe itself is pretty simple and straightforward. I noted a couple of major differences between this recipe and others that I’ve tried: (1) parboiling the rice first and (2) no eggs. I decided to follow the recipe as written too see how things would turn out. For flavor, I added a cinnamon stick (broken in two) to the mixture.

Dorie Greenspan personally reached out to the TWD group to highlight a correction on the recipe, which is to cook the pudding for 45-55 minutes (not the 30 minutes noted in the book). Even after cooking over a low heat for one hour, the pudding mixture barely thickened (could I have parboiled for too long, stripping the starch out of the rice?).

After taking the pudding off the stove, I divided the pudding into two containers and flavored one with 2 oz bittersweet chocolate (it melted into the still hot pudding beautifully) and the other with vanilla extract and chai spices (cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, ginger).

The chocolate version thickened nicely overnight. I couldn’t say the same for the chai version as it was still watery and soupy (blech!). I ended up reheating that portion, tempered in one egg and cooked it for a few minutes, allowing the mixture to thicken. After re-cooling and refrigerating, I finally got the thick, creamy texture that I was looking for.

Taste-wise, I thought that both versions were quite delicious. I was particularly really happy with the chocolate version, as for whatever reason chocolate in rice pudding didn’t really excite me.

I liked the simplicity of this recipe (and would make a mental note to temper in two eggs for the full recipe), but I don’t think this will trump my go-to rice pudding recipe. For the recipe, please check out Isabelle’s charming site. To see rice pudding by the hundreds, check out the TWD blogroll.