A little history about my family: I’m first generation Canadian born from Portuguese parents who fled a dictatorship controlled Portugal in the 1970’s. I had a very traditional Portuguese upbringing which, thankfully, meant a lot of delicious Portuguese cuisine.
What is Portuguese cuisine?
No. It’s not just Nando’s chicken.
But whenever people ask me I have a hard time describing Portuguese food. “Uhhh it’s a lot of cod fish and chourico and kale and potatoes and beans”.
But it really is so much more than that.
Ethnic foods such as sushi, pad thai or jap chae are no longer ethnic anymore. They’ve become mainstream and a regular part of our every day lives. Yet Portuguese cuisine remains undiscovered.
I’m here to uncover it.
(along with the help of my mom)
Welcome to the Portuguese Cooking series.
Today we start off with one of my favourite desserts (with variations from all over the world) – Arroz Doce, also known as Sweet Rice or Rice pudding.
Ingredients
Serves: 1 large serving platter or 6 individual plates
- 1 cup white short grain rice
- 2 1/2 cups 2% milk
- 1 cup white sugar
- 4 egg yolks
- 1/2 lemon peel
- 1 tablespoon butter
- Pinch of salt
- Cinnamon
Method
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 1hr 20 minutes
- In a pot bring 2 cups water to a boil. Add rice, stir and immediately drain water.
- Add one cup milk, lemon peel and a pinch of salt to your rice. Simmer at very low heat, occasionally mixing to prevent the rice from sticking to the pot.
- When the rice starts to absorb the liquids, add another cup of milk. Let simmer over low heat and continue to stir occassionally.
- Once the rice has again started to absorb the milk, add one cup of sugar and stir.
- In a small bowl, whisk together 4 egg yolks with the remaining 1/2 cup of milk. Add to the pot of rice with a tablespoon of butter. Mix thoroughly and often to prevent sticking over low heat.
- Continue to simmer until the rice has absorbed all the liquid and is thoroughly cooked. Remove lemon peels.
- Pour your sweet rice onto a serving platter or individual plates and decorate with cinnamon. Allow to cool to room temperature before serving.
Arroz doce is very easy to cook but, like most Portuguese recipes, is just a bit time consuming. The most important thing to remember is to cook the rice over a very low heat and to stir often. You don’t need to be a slave to the stove for the entire hour and a half. My mom often will leave the rice for a bit while she does other things. But do check on it every so often and give it a good stir. The finished result will be very sticky, sweet and delicious!
The cross hatch cinnamon design you see above is pretty standard, but there are so many ways you can decorate your arroz doce. This stenciled design and all of these make me happy. But if decorating intimidates you there’s nothing wrong with simply sprinkling the cinnamon on top. For an extra special touch top it off with a stick of cinnamon.
I hope you try it out and enjoy this sweet as much as I do!
Oh and heads up! Thursday’s Squirrelly Minds expert is a makeup artist! Have any questions about makeup? E-mail them for a chance for Sara to answer.
I’m going to try and cook those and see if they taste like the one my grandma would always make for me 🙂 I never got the recipe she used, but I remembered she added cloves to it, because I was always biting very carefully so as not to end up biting on a clove—it was painful!
Loved this recipe by the way, I hope you share more Portuguese recipes, especially desserts. 🙂
Cloves, interesting! Thats’ one thing I love about Portuguese cooking. There’s the basic dish and then complete variants often depending on what part of Portugal the person is from
This looks so delicious- I think I’ll try to make it soon….
Do you think it’s possible to do most of it in a slow cooker (after the boiling of the water, etc.)….?
Hmm we’ve never done that but it’s certainly worth a try so long as it’s on the lowest heat. I think you’d still want to mix it though since the high sugar content would cause for easy sticking and burning
Sorry,his recepie does not work in a slow cooker and not all kinds of rice works either. 🙂
Sounds like something my husband would LOVE! He’s a big rice pudding fan.
PS–That top graphic is absolutely gorgeous; well done!
this reminds me of Asian sticky rice. i don’t know much about portuguese cooking and am glad i found your blog!
i always have some extra cooked rice lying around. happy to find a new sweet way to use it. 🙂
love, moon
blog | twitter
@Melissa: Aww thanks!
@Dina: Thakns so much for coming by!
@moon: I wouldn’t recommend using already cooked rice. It will turn to mush by the end!
YUM! Thank you so much for sharing your heritage with us. I’m intrigued to learn more
I love rice pudding! This looks amazing! The cross hatch design is so pretty. Great graphic… hope to see more of these (and videos!) in the future!
Hi! Looks delicious! I can’t tell you how much I miss my Auntie Norma’s sweet rice-I’m definitely trying this recipe. Can you clarify though-when you say to add the rice and then drain the water, that’s very different from other recipes. Do you completely drain the water and replace the liquid with milk only? Thanks!
Hey Sarah!
This recipe is from Sao Miguel in the Acores, so they may do it slightly different from the mainland. But you got it! Completely drain the water then replace with just milk. Briefly boiling the rice in water is a method of cleaning the rice and prepping it for the milk.
Enjoy!
Way to go Tania. You had mentioned you were going to do this; I am glad that you have found the time. Our cuisine needs to get noticed and you are absolutely correct; it’s nothing like Nandos. lol All the best.
There’s another recipe coming up very soon!