A pudding experiment!

 During the early part of lockdown I used up the last of our pudding rice and couldn't get any more in our local Tesco, which was a tad annoying.  Anyhoo, I had a brainwave and got some arborio rice to try out as a substitute ~ after all it's short-grain like pudding rice is.  And then I promptly forgot all about making rice puds over the summer 😄  Fast-forward to Christmas Pudding Sunday and I found myself with fresh milk to use up from the leftover ingredients ~ finally time for that rice pudding experiment 😉

As you can see the arborio behaved just like the pudding rice does.  I got to thinking about what exactly "pudding rice" is, so did a quick search on Google and this is what the good 'ole BBC has to say on the matter:

"This is not a specific type of rice, but a generic description for short-grained white rice used for making rice pudding.  The term is rarely used outside England.  Whichever rice you use, the important thing is that it should give a soft, creamy, slightly sticky result."

So now we know!  If you too fancy a bowl of comforting, rib-sticking, rice pudding here's the very simple recipe I've used for donkey's years, which gives 4-6 servings:

5oz/140g short-grain rice, such as pudding or arborio rice

3oz/90g sugar

2 pints/1 litre milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Place all the ingredients, except the vanilla, in a saucepan and bring to the boil.  Turn down to a gentle simmer and cook for about 25-30 minutes, stirring from time-to-time to prevent the rice from sticking to the bottom of the pan.  When the rice is cooked, remove the pan from the heat and stir in the vanilla extract.