WEEK 28: AMANDA AND MERRILL’S BEST RICE PUDDING
Caramel Rice Pudding with Brown Butter
and Crème Fraîche
Photography by Sarah Shatz
BY MERRILL | SERVES 6 TO 8
Merrill: For this dessert, I began with the idea of using brown butter and Arborio rice to make a risotto-style rice pudding. But my first attempt wasn’t that exciting. That’s when the idea of starting with a brown butter caramel worked its way into the pudding, along with the addition of crème fraîche, which I thought would cut the sweetness nicely. After a few more test runs, I also decided that the rice had a nicer texture when it was simmered with all the liquid than it did when I cooked it like risotto, adding the liquid bit by bit. The bonus is that this also means less work!
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
¼ cup plus 3 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons crème fraîche, plus more for serving
6 cups whole milk
Seeds from ½ vanilla bean
¼ teaspoon sea salt
¾ cup Arborio rice
- Melt the butter in a 3-quart heavy saucepan over medium heat. Once the butter stops foaming, and you see orangey-brown specks start to appear, stir gently with a wooden spoon. After a minute or two, when the specks are nut brown and the butter smells nice and toasty, sprinkle ¼ cup of sugar over the butter and stir to combine. (It will clump up a little, but don’t worry!)
- Switch to a whisk and cook the butter and sugar, whisking constantly, until the sugar has melted and the mixture becomes a smooth, rich brown caramel, about 5 minutes. (Early on, the butter and sugar will separate, and the butter will pool around the edges of the sugar, but never fear! Once the sugar has fully melted, the two will start to come together again, and you’ll have a nice smooth caramel.)
- When the caramel is a rich nut brown and starts to smoke, remove the pan from the heat and quickly and carefully whisk in the crème fraîche and about ½ cup of the milk. Don’t worry if the mixture bubbles up when you do this—it’ll settle down again quickly. (This step cools off the caramel and keeps it from cooking further.) Return the pan to the heat and whisk in the rest of the milk, the remaining 3 tablespoons sugar, the vanilla seeds, and the salt. If the caramel seizes a little, just keep whisking until the mixture becomes smooth again.
- Switch back to the wooden spoon and stir in the rice. Turn up the heat and bring the mixture to a boil. Reduce the heat so that the milk is simmering steadily. Cook the rice pudding, uncovered, for about 25 minutes, stirring frequently to make sure nothing sticks to the bottom of the pan, especially toward the end. The rice should be tender but not mushy, and the pudding should thicken but still be quite loose—remember that it will thicken a lot more as it cools. Transfer the pudding to a container, cover, and refrigerate until cold. Serve in individual bowls with a dollop of crème fraîche.
Photography by Sarah Shatz
ABOUT THE COOK
Merrill Stubbs is a cofounder of Food52.
Her favorite food group: cheese, followed closely by crème fraîche.
She loves: beating Amanda in cooking contests.
WHAT THE COMMUNITY SAID
cheese1227: “Merrill, I made this recipe this weekend and it was fabulous. I want to thank you for all of the parenthetical notes within the recipe that pretty much predicted right where I would say ‘uh, oh,’ thinking it was all going wrong. The notes told me where to expect the rough spots and to keep working through them to the finished product. This one is a keeper.”
BEHIND THE SCENES
This was a special week at Food52: we faced off against each other to see who could come up with the best rice pudding! Amanda took her defeat in stride, although there was that one incident of Gordon Ramsay–like pot throwing.