How to Cook Creamy Danish Rice Pudding (Risengrød) Without Burning It?

Risengrød serve with cinnamon and butter

Recipe adapted from Arla

Serves 4

Preparation and Cooking Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

1. 1 cup or 180-200 g Danish pudding rice (Grødris) (you can substitute it with sushi rice)
2. 1 liter of fresh skimmed milk
3. ¼ tsp salt

Directions:

1. Place a metal stand into the pressure cooker, add 250 ml water and lower an empty heat-proof bowl into it.

2. Add rice and milk into the bowl.

3. Close the pressure cooker, turn on high heat till the pressure cooker reaches pressure steam under setting 2. Turn down heat (no. 5 on my stove) to maintain at setting 2 and steam for 20 minutes.

4. When the pressure cooker cools down, remove rice pudding from pressure cooker, and add milk to adjust to desired consistency.

5. Add salt and stir well.

6. Serve top with cinnamon sugar and butter (optional, it is good on its own).

Additional Information:

This is a classic Danish dish and its Danish name is "risengrød", which directly translated means The Rice Porridge. When in Denmark, one should try it. The Danish rice pudding is actually porridge cooked with milk. When I first came to Denmark and was introduced to the Danish rice porridge for the first time, I thought it was strange that the Danes eat their porridge sweet. As a Chinese, we only eat our porridge as a savoury dish. I never thought that rice could be cooked like a "dessert". But I like it a lot.

Daddy FECS however found it strange that we Chinese eat our porridge savoury, and he would never eat the Chinese porridge, nor would he like to try it. Talking about cultural differences! Daddy FECS grew up eating this dish, and he loves to eat it the Danish way with the cinnamon sugar and butter. However, it actually tastes very good without the sugar and the butter topping.

It is very tedious to make, as it is not easy to cook rice with milk without burning the bottom. It requires frequent stiring and requires one to stand for a long time in the kitchen. Many Danes nowadays will buy store bought rice porridge. But one can make it from scratch and yet do away with the frequent stiring by using the Chinese double-boiling method. It is the same concept as melting chocolate, using indirect heat source from double-boiling. In addition, if you double-boil it using a pressure cooker, the cooking time is greatly reduced to less than half an hour, :-) You can also use the double-boiling method on ordinary pot, but it will take hours under simmering. The advantage of using the double-boiling method, whether you use a normal pot for double boiling or the pressure cooker, is that you don't need to stand in the kitchen to stir it, freeing you time for other things :-)

This is an example of how I embrace the good and discard the bad in my cross-cultural marriage - I learned to cook a new tasty dish, but achieve time-saving by using the Chinese double-boiling method :-)

References:

http://www.arla.dk/opskrifter/Risengrod-med-kanelsukker-og-smorklat/