Cardamon Infused Black Rice Pudding with Coconut Milk
By: Susan Harrell
Published: Friday, December 6, 2013 - 6:10pm

Ingredients




1⁄3 cup long-grain black rice
1 14-ounce cans light coconut milk
1⁄2 cup brown sugar
Pinch of salt
A few cardamon pods, cinnamon sticks or saffron

Preparation

1 Heat the oven to 300°F. Put the rice in a food processor and pulse a few times to break the grains up a bit and scratch their hulls; don’t overdo it, or you’ll pulverize them. This step is very very important. 2 Put all the ingredients in a 2-quart ovenproof pot or Dutch oven. Stir a couple of times and put the pan in the oven, covered. Cook for 30 minutes, then stir. 3 Cook for 30 minutes more, and stir again. At this point the milk will have darkened a bit and should be bubbling, and the rice will have begun to swell. 4 Cook for 30 minutes more. The milk will be even darker, and the pudding will start to look more like rice than milk. It’s almost done. 5 Return the mixture to the oven and check every 10 minutes, stirring gently each time you check.

About

It is difficult to be patient with the aroma of coconut milk slowly simmering in the oven, but patience is both required and rewarded by this rice pudding. I love the idea of using black rice in this recipe. It’s healthier, for one, and adds a nuttiness and texture that you can’t get from white rice. The coconut milk makes the pudding rich, a little exotic, and much more flavorful than regular milk would. I used light coconut milk, which is pretty drastically lower in fat than the regular kind, and it was still quite rich.