Rizogalo
A Greek rice pudding of short grain rice, milk, sugar and vanilla simmered for 45 minutes until creamy and dusted with cinnamon.
Photograph credit: Rice pudding cinnamon by Ross Berteig from Monrovia, California, USA · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Where This Goes Wrong
Soften the rice in water first.
Stir often over low heat.
Add the sugar late.
Cooking Rizogalo
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Simmer the rice in the water in a heavy pan for 10 minutes.
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Add the milk, lemon peel, vanilla and salt and bring to a gentle simmer.
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Cook over low heat for 30 minutes, stirring every few minutes, until thick and creamy.
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Stir in the sugar and cook for 5 minutes more. Remove the peel and vanilla.
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Spoon into bowls, cool and dust with the cinnamon.
Why It Works
Most home rice puddings come out stodgy, and the fix is to stir often and add the sugar late. Rizogalo is the Greek rice pudding, a creamy, pale dessert that is served cold in small bowls with a dusting of cinnamon, and it is made on the hob in just over 45 minutes.
Start with a small amount of rice, and simmer it in water for 10 minutes, to soften it before the milk goes in. Rice cooked directly in milk stays hard, because milk toughens the grain. Add the milk, a strip of lemon peel and a vanilla pod. Keep the heat low and stir every few minutes, scraping the base, for 30 minutes, until the rice is creamy and thick.
Add the sugar only at the end, for the last 5 minutes. Taste for sweetness. Remove the lemon peel and vanilla pod and spoon into bowls. The pudding thickens a good deal as it cools, so it should be looser than you want it to be when it comes off the heat. Dust with ground cinnamon. It is served cold, and keeps for 3 days in the fridge.
Leftovers, Reheating and Keeping
Keeps for 3 days in the fridge.
What to Serve Alongside
- Cinnamon
- Stewed fruit
- Honey
Rizogalo Nutrition
No nutrition figures are given for this recipe: they cannot be worked out reliably from its ingredient list (some ingredient lines cannot be read). Why some recipes have none.
Your notes on this recipe
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Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked.
First published ; last changed .
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