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Kheer

The rice goes in whole and the grains stay visible in the finished pudding.

Vegetarian, but not vegan — contains dairy (whole milk).

Ingredients

Method

  1. THE RICE GOES IN WHOLE AND THE GRAINS STAY VISIBLE IN THE FINISHED PUDDING. Its article gives the dish as milk, sugar or jaggery and rice boiled together, and that is the baseline every other milk pudding here departs from. Whole short grains, rinsed but not soaked, simmered until they swell and burst and release enough starch to thicken the milk around them -- and still read as grains on the spoon. Phirni, as on its own page, is the same ingredients with the rice ground to powder first, and it sets smooth with nothing to bite. That one difference is what separates two desserts that otherwise share a shopping list.
  2. IT IS NOT SOAKED, AND IT IS RINSED ONLY BRIEFLY. Two changes of water. Soaked rice has already taken up water and will not drink milk, which is where the flavour comes from; rinsed too hard, the surface starch goes down the sink and nothing thickens.
  3. THE MILK IS BROUGHT UP FIRST AND THE RICE GOES INTO IT HOT. Not started together from cold. Rice dropped into simmering milk stays separate; started cold it sinks and welds to the base.
  4. FORTY-FIVE MINUTES AT A BARE SIMMER, STIRRED OFTEN FROM THE BOTTOM. Milk and rice together catch very readily and a scorched patch flavours the whole pan.
  5. THE SUGAR GOES IN WHEN THE RICE IS ALREADY SOFT. Sugar early slows the grains softening and they stay chalky in the middle however long you cook them.
  6. JAGGERY IS AN ALTERNATIVE AND IT NEEDS CARE. Its article allows sugar or jaggery. Jaggery is acidic enough to split hot milk, so take the pan off the heat, let it stop steaming, then stir it in.
  7. THE OTHER STARCHES ITS ARTICLE ALLOWS ARE REAL VARIATIONS. Instead of rice it names cracked wheat, vermicelli, sago and tapioca -- the vermicelli version being common in the north. Each wants a shorter cook than rice.
  8. IN BENGAL THE SAME WORD MEANS SOMETHING ELSE ENTIRELY, AND THIS PAGE IS THE PUDDING. There, kheer is milk boiled for over an hour down to a THIRD of its volume -- an evaporated milk used as the base of other sweets rather than eaten as a pudding, and reduced further still it becomes khoa. Both words are spelled and said the same way, so this page answers a search for either and says which one it is.
  9. THE CARDAMOM, SAFFRON AND NUTS GO IN AT THE END. Off the heat. Its article names dried fruit, nuts, cardamom and saffron as the flavourings.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under India · All recipes