Rice pudding - Vegan or classic with milk! This is how it tastes and how you can prepare it!

Rice pudding, thick rice or rice porridge. All these terms describe a dish that is especially popular with children, but which is not only something for little sweet tooth. They describe a sweet dish - often seasoned with cinnamon and/or sugar - which consists of round grain rice cooked slowly in milk.  

As described above, round grain rice is used in the production of rice pudding. You can often find it already as "rice pudding" in the supermarket. The long boiling in the milk causes the short-chain starch molecules to be released from the rice, giving the finished product its familiar creamy, grainy consistency. Sometimes you can find portion packs in the supermarket, which take considerably less than 40 minutes to prepare. This is then an "instant" rice pudding that only needs to swell briefly.  

As already mentioned, probably the most common and well-known way to eat rice pudding is the combination with cinnamon and sugar. In addition to the addition of these two "spices", rice pudding is often eaten with a creamy sauce of fruit. The most common fruits are raspberries or strawberries, but also cherries. Sometimes the fruits are also added raw, so that the rice pudding not only tastes delicious but also looks really nice.

Besides preparing the dish with normal hay or cow's milk, other types of milk can also be used. Depending on the basic ingredient used, the rice pudding gets its own unique taste. One of the best-known other ways of preparing rice pudding is to boil it in coconut or oat milk. The coconut milk gives the rice a light "island touch" and can then be combined very nicely with pineapple or, as standard, with cherries. If you use oat milk, the rice pudding gets a nutty taste and also tastes a little sweeter without the extra sugar. Accordingly, one can also say that one can offer here a vegan rice pudding. 

The rice pudding, which is now ready, can be enjoyed in various forms and at various times. You can enjoy it as a main course, but also - and this is the more common variation - as a dessert. It can be eaten warm, hot or cold.   

In Denmark, Sweden, Iceland, Finland, Norway and the Faroe Islands, rice pudding is even eaten on a very special occasion: here, rice pudding is part of the traditional Christmas meal. It is eaten on this occasion with cinnamon and milk or so-called fruit kissel. Fruit kissel is somewhat similar to the red fruit jelly known in this country. The custom also says that you hide a small almond in one portion. Whoever finds this almond will probably marry a year later. But most of the times, one makes it so that the youngest child finds the almond and one only rewards it with a toy - if this makes a difference?

Of course, it is also possible to lift the rice pudding from the small titbit in between to the gourmet level. For this purpose, one prepares a condé rice. The preparation is very similar to the rice pudding. But one uses flavored milk (vanilla, lemon or also orange), butter and a lot of sugar. Here you can also vary again and add Bavarian cream and candied fruits for an Empress rice or Bavarian orange cream for the Maltese rice.