Rice pudding is one of our favorite childhood desserts. It’s creamy, sweet, rich and perfectly complimented by ample amounts of cinnamon. It’s the ultimate familiar comfort food. We’ve taken this childhood classic and elevated it with matcha for the perfect dessert. Matcha balances out the sweetness and creates a slightly more interesting flavor.

While you can easily buy rice pudding from the store, it simply cannot compare to this old fashioned, homemade rice pudding recipe. It only requires a few ingredients and is absolutely worth the time investment.

As the milk cooks down, it creates a natural sweetness, therefore requiring a minimal amount of added sugar- only 1/3 of a cup. Making this a relatively healthy dessert option.

This recipe only requires 6 ingredients and there’s no need to buy special rice. If you have a short grain rice on hand, like arborio or sushi rice, that’s great. But I you, like us, only keep long grain rice around, that works excellently as well. This is a no-fuss recipe! Use whatever you have on hand. 

Health Benefits of Matcha

While this is a dessert and meant to be thoroughly enjoyed, it’s not completely deficient of nutrients! Matcha is packed full of antioxidants which decrease or delay cellular damage and in turn can decrease heart disease, cancer, and other disease risks.

Matcha is also a great source for key vitamins and minerals like iron, vitamin A, vitamin C, magnesium and zinc.

While it’s clear just how incredibly beneficial matcha is, if matcha is heated to too high of a temperature, some of these benefits start to decrease, unfortunately. Because of this, we’ve added matcha to the rice pudding at the very end, once it’s had a chance to cool down a bit. While rice pudding packs an incredible flavor punch, know that you’re also still get the full benefits of matcha as well.

Cooking Tips:

• Once you’ve added rice, make sure your milk mixture is on a low simmer ONLY. Too high of heat will scorch the bottom of your pot, burn the milk, and leave you with a sad rice pudding.
• Use the rice you’ve got on hand. Long grain rice is completely fine.
• Sift your matcha before adding it to the mixture. You don’t want to end up with clumps. Using a culinary grade matcha is completely fine for this recipe.
• Use whole milk. We want our rice pudding creamy! You can also experiment using a plant-based milk at a 1:1 ratio- although we haven’t tested that out.

Ingredients:

• 5 cups milk
• 1/2 cup heaping short grained rice
• 1/3 cup white sugar
• Pinch of salt
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 tsp matcha (or to taste)

Directions:

1. In a large saucepan, combine milk, sugar and salt. Bring to a gentle boil over medium-high heat.
2. Stir in rice and reduce heat to low. You only want your mixture to simmer so be sure to adjust your heat as needed or the milk will burn.
3. Let cook, uncovered, for 50-60 minutes stirring occasionally. Mixture will thicken up as it cooks.
4. Once thickened (it should resemble the consistency of yogurt), remove from heat and stir in vanilla and matcha.
5. Let cool and then refrigerate.
6. When ready to heat sprinkle cinnamon if desired. If mixture is too thick, stir in an extra ½ cup of milk or until desired consistency is reached.