How to Make Rice Pudding - The Basics on QVC

You can serve it hot or you can serve it cold.
You can make it from scratch or you can use leftovers. Let's make some rice pudding. So
today we are going to make rice pudding from scratch. We've got our raw rice here, and
that leads us to our first question.

Which kind of rice should we use? We have a choice.
We have short grain, medium grain or long grain rice. Well short grain rice is going
to give us a creamier rice pudding so that's a great one to go with. You can use milk if
you are using short grain rice. Long grain rice is not quite as creamy so you might
want to substitute some of the milk with cream.

Today, we are going to use medium grain rice
which is pretty much perfect. I'm going to use a relatively big pan here with a lid
because we're going to cover the rice pudding as it cooks. I want a nice pan that is non-stick
because it's going to make it easier to clean and easier to stir all of that rice around.
First things first, we're going to get our milk into this pan. Now this might look like
a lot of milk but the reason we're using so much is because we're cooking our rice
from scratch.

That means the rice has to absorb all of that liquid as well as then become
creamy and soupy to that delicious rice pudding we all love. When you use raw rice it's a
four or five to one ratio of dairy to rice. If you are using leftover rice to make your
rice pudding you're going to use a one to one ratio of rice to dairy. We're going to
turn this on and bring it to a simmer.

We're going to stir everything together. As soon
as it comes to a simmer, we're going to turn this down to the lowest setting, and we're
going to put that lid on. Now every three to five, five to ten minutes, every once and
a while, come back and give this a good stir. Make sure there is enough liquid in there.
If you ever need to dilute this just add a little more milk or cream.

This rice pudding
should take you thirty-five to forty minutes. You're going to have stirred it regularly
so we're stirring it again here at the end. We're going to now flavor it. What do you
want it to taste like? Would you like to add lemon juice and lemon zest? Perhaps a little
orange juice, orange zest.

How about some white chocolate or even dark chocolate? I'm
going to add some bourbon soaked raisins. Very simple to do. Just soak your raisins
in the bourbon. When you start your rice pudding and a half hour later, you'll have raisins
like this.

They'll plump up. I'm straining out that bourbon. I'm adding the raisins.
Stir this in along with a couple of other ingredients. I'm always going to add some
vanilla extract.

That's just for a nice little boost of flavor. Then I'm looking for consistency.
How thin or thick do you want your rice pudding? I'm going to thin it just a tiny bit with
a little bit of heavy cream. That's going to add to the creaminess of our rice pudding.
Remember this rice will continue to absorb this liquid. If you're serving this cold,
you might want to reserve the cream until the rice is cold because of course it will
be thicker then.

Now my favorite part of any food preparation I'm going to taste it to
make sure it's perfect. The rice is so tender and delicious and creamy. This is perfect.
Before we serve it let's get rid of that cinnamon stick we had in there. Let's get
a dish.

Make sure everybody gets some raisins. Garnish it with a little bit of ground cinnamon.
That's a perfect dessert. Thanks for watching. If you would like to see more of the basics,
click over here.

If you would like to see everything I used in this recipe, click over
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