Pudding Made From Chinese Leftovers?

Ever wonder what to do with that extra carton of rice you always get from the Chinese takeout place?  You hate just throwing in the trash, so you decide you’ll use it for dinner sometime this week.  Ten days later you realize it’s still in the fridge and end up throwing it in the garbage anyway.  Well, no more.  This rice pudding is so easy and so delicious, you’ll be thrilled to have leftover rice anytime. 

Here’s what you’ll need:

2 cups cooked rice
2 ½ cups vanilla coconut milk
¼ cup sugar
½ teaspoon cinnamon
Pinch of nutmeg
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 Tablespoon cornstarch
1 egg
2 Tablespoons butter

Ok, so mostly just ignore my ingredients picture.  I missed a few things… egg, cinnamon, etc.  I’m sure you know what those look like, though.  Recently, I discovered So Delicious coconut milk.  Well, coconut milk beverage it says on the carton.  I don’t know what the difference is from the stuff in the can, exactly, but I like the So Delicious vanilla flavor to put on my oatmeal in the mornings.  It’s seriously yum, so I thought, why not use it for my pudding.  Now, if you don’t want to go out and buy some, go ahead and substitute regular milk and add an extra 2 Tablespoons of sugar.  And speaking of sugar… you can see that I am also using coconut palm sugar.  Don’t worry about that.  I just bought it recently and wanted to try it out, regular granulated sugar or even brown sugar will be totally fine. 

So now that that’s out of the way, let’s get started.  In a medium saucepan, pour 2 cups of the milk and stir in the cooked rice, sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg. 

In a separate dish, whisk together 1 Tablespoon of cornstarch and ¼ cup of the remaining cold milk. 

Bring the rice mixture to a low boil and cook, stirring constantly for 5 – 7 minutes.  Much of the liquid will have cooked off and the mixture will look something like this.

 

Stir in the cornstarch slurry. 

Once the pudding reaches a boil again, it will be nice and thick and creamy. 

Go ahead and turn the heat to low.  In another dish whisk together 1 egg, the remaining ¼ cup milk, and 2 teaspoons vanilla. 

When adding eggs to something hot, you need to bring them up to temperature slowly.  This process is called tempering.  To do that, simply add a bit of the hot pudding to the egg mixture and whisk it in.  I added a total of about a cup of the pudding, in three additions. 

Pour the now hot egg mixture into the pudding and stir everything together.  The residual heat from your pudding will cook the egg, so go ahead and turn off the heat. 

Now for the final touch.  Stir in 2 Tablespoons of butter. 

You have just reached rice pudding heaven.  If you like your rice pudding cold, like I do, make sure you press a piece of plastic wrap directly on top of it so that it doesn’t form a skin, and then go ahead and refrigerate it. 

I think most people tend to like rice pudding warm, though, so just garnish it with a few nuts and/or raisins.  Personally I think raisins are the devil.

What’s your favorite kind of pudding?