Traditional British Oven-Cooked Rice Pudding

This looks like it takes a long time, but it’s just five minutes of preparation, then you walk away and leave it to cook, and you come back to yummy creamy deliciousness.

Grease a 1 1/2-pint casserole dish or pyrex baking dish with the butter.

Pour in the rice and sugar and milk and give it a lazy stir.

Sprinkle the nutmeg over the top.

Traditionally, this should be cooked in the bottom of the oven while you are cooking something else. Put it in the bottom of the oven while your cake, batch of cookies, roast, casserole, etc. is cooking. The temperature doesn’t really matter, but the rice pudding should only be cooked at a high temperature for an hour.

When whatever you were really using the oven for is done, stir the rice pudding, move it to the middle shelf and then turn the oven off.

Leave the rice pudding to keep cooking in the residual heat, checking occasionally until the rice is tender, the milk has thickened, and there is a nice golden skin over the top flecked with nutmeg. When cooking in the residual heat, it should be fully cooked after another hour, but you can leave this for a long time without it burning, because you’ve switched the oven off (I went to bed and forgot about one once, and it was fine when I re-discovered it in the morning!).

If it starts to seem too thick, but the rice still has some hardness to it, you can add a little more milk. (If you don’t like/want a skin, cover the dish with a lid or foil. But when I was a kid, we argued over the skin. It was the best part!)

The long, slow gentle cooking lets the rice fluff up and absorb the mik, and release its starches so the rest of the milk thickens.

If you do want to cook it on its own, put it in at 150C (300F) and cook for 2 hours. But it was designed to use up space and residual heat, so that’s how I always make it, usually alongside a roast dinner, putting it in at the same time as the potatoes then leaving it to cook in the residual heat while I eat. Then it’s ready by the time I have finished dinner, washed the dishes and decided I am ready for pudding.

Serve on its own, hot or at room teperature, or add a spoon of stewed fruit, compote, sliced fresh fruit, or the traditional British accompaniment—a spoonful of strawberry jam!

Leftovers can be cooled then refrigerated. They will thicken and solidify, and can be served cold. Or you can reheat it in the microwave, or on the stove with an extra splash of milk.

This is also good made with a teaspoon of vanilla extract, or with vanilla sugar, or even with a tablespoon of cocoa powder added before cooking for chocolate rice pudding!

This recipe scales up well, but I wouldn’t make more than 3 oz/3 pints in one pot. It just doesn’t come out right. It takes longer to cook in a larger size, so allow a little more time.