Tuesdays with Dorie: Arborio Rice Pudding

Isabelle of Les gourmandises d’Isa selected this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe: Arborio rice pudding. I am not really a fan or rice pudding, or tapioca pudding for that matter. Pudding just shouldn’t have “things” in it. I don’t mind pistachio pudding, but I’ve only really had that used in bar cookies. My husband, on the other hand, was really excited when he heard that I was going to make rice pudding. I figured I would be a good sport and make it and give it a try.

Here’s the reason I don’t like rice or tapioca in pudding: my experience, in using tapioca especially, was in chemistry class. I used to be a chemistry TA and in the spring we would have to prepare the “quals” samples for qualitative analysis. We’d get to use all sorts of interesting things to make the quals more challenging. Tapioca was a favorite to add to throw students off. So since then the idea of tapioca or rice pudding just seemed weird.

The recipe was exceedingly simple. I kept wondering what would make these few ingredients come together to make pudding. I opted for the vanilla version, since I wanted to try it in its simplest form. I cooked the pudding as the recipe called for, but after the cooking time the pudding hadn’t really done anything. I ended up cooking it more than twice as long as the recipe called for. It was supposed to absorb most of the liquid but it hadn’t really done that at all. Mine had eventually thickened a bit, so I figured it was time to refrigerate it.

I refrigerated this overnight and it did firm up quite a bit, but it was far from a thick pudding. I topped mine with cinnamon and nutmeg. I tried it and it’s ok, I still prefer chocolate pudding I think. My husband liked it, but he thought that it needed more rice. It also wasn’t as thick as he was used to, but I felt that it had thickened up considerably. I’m glad I gave it a try, but I’m still not a fan of rice pudding.