What's The Best Type Of Rice To Use For Rice Pudding?
If you have the task of bringing a dessert to the next potluck dinner or you've got a crowd to feed, there's no need to run out to the grocery store for ingredients because you probably have everything you need to make a batch of rice pudding. You can whip together a decadent finish for any dinner with just some dry rice, milk or cream, eggs, and sugar. A basic rice pudding recipe takes almost no time to prep, it's inexpensive, and all of the ingredients are pantry staples, so even if you have to shop for one or two items, they can get used up elsewhere later. Many different types of rice are available at most grocery stores if you're on the hunt for pudding supplies, but don't be swayed by any exotic varieties. The simplest solution is the answer: Regular long-grain white rice makes the best rice pudding.
That's not to say that other rice varieties don't make tasty desserts, and there are absolutely recipes out there for puddings made with sushi rice and arborio, but regular old Uncle Ben's (or whatever your brand of choice is) and long-grain basmati, have the right amount of starch, as well as the perfect texture and consistency, for mixing with custard.
Long grain white rice varieties
There are many reasons why rice pudding has been around for more than 8,000 years. It's simple to make, and pretty much every culture eats rice, so it's easy to source the ingredients. Rice pudding also tastes much more decadent than the time it takes to assemble, which is perhaps why many different civilizations claim it.
Rice has been a staple of the human diet even longer than rice pudding, almost 10,000 years to be exact. So, it stands to reason that people made rice pudding with the rice they ate when it became domesticated. However, you don't need to be an originalist when choosing rice for making pudding because rice is different today. Regular, widely cultivated, long-grain varieties of white rice, like American long grain, basmati, and jasmine, work just fine for pudding. They have the right amount of starch to give the dish a creamy consistency while maintaining enough structure so that you can distinguish the individual grains when they're cooked, according to Cook's Illustrated. They are also the most inexpensive and easiest to find at the grocery store, so it's a win-win.
Other rice varieties
If you have other rice varieties hanging around in your pantry, they're not totally off-limits when making rice pudding. However, just as when cooking different types of rice for savory dishes, you'll need to adjust your rice pudding recipe to account for the rice's cooking constraints. If your rice takes a long time to cook — like brown and wild rice — it's better to make pudding using pre-cooked grains. Other varieties, like sushi and arborio rice, are highly starchy, so you want to take that into account when you're formulating how many eggs to use for the custard so that it's not too dense. The good news is that millions of rice pudding recipes use every type of rice you can find at the supermarket. So, if you don't have any plain long-grain rice on hand, chances are someone has already figured out how to make dessert with whatever you do have.
If your cupboards are truly bare, stock up on a little extra long-grain white rice next time you're at the grocery store. That way, you'll always have a little extra to make any easy rice pudding any night of the week.