Grandma-style rice pudding
What can be said about rice pudding! It is a typical dessert in the gastronomy of many countries, which explains its wide variety: with burnt sugar, with vanilla, with dulce de leche, with cinnamon…
To that we must add “rice pudding with a hint of,” something very popular in Germany. They make it in countless flavors; without looking far you can find it flavored with raspberry, cherry, mint, chocolate… Anything they can think of. Faced with this variety—so contradictory to me—I stick with the traditional flavor of a lifetime, the grandmother’s version, and here I present my family’s recipe.
This one is for my grandmother!
Ingredients
1 liter of whole milk
½ cup of short-grain rice
1 cinnamon stick
lemon peel
3 tablespoons of sugar (or a bit more if you like it sweeter)
Preparation
Put the milk to boil in a large saucepan or pot, together with the lemon peel (the less white pith it has, the better, so it won’t turn bitter while cooking) and the cinnamon stick so it infuses from the beginning.
Bring it to a boil, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon so it doesn’t stick.
When it starts to boil, add the rice and immediately the sugar.
Let it cook, stirring constantly, for about 35–40 minutes, until the rice is creamy.
Remove the lemon pieces and the cinnamon stick (they have already done their job and flavored the milk) and fill the bowls.
You can decorate it with ground cinnamon or enjoy it as is, like me, who prefers it only with the flavor of the cinnamon stick.
Things to keep in mind
You can replace the cinnamon stick with vanilla to give it a different aroma and flavor; it also turns out very good.
Likewise, instead of lemon peel, you can use orange peel. These are slight variations that significantly change the final result.
If after a few days you have leftover rice pudding, you can use it to make delicious croquettes. It must be very cold and thick so you can shape it; simply coat it in egg and breadcrumbs and fry them. Drain them on absorbent paper and… enjoy!