Zesty Lemon Cardamom Rice Pudding Recipe

Rice is an incredible kitchen staple, cooked and enjoyed all across the world in a wide variety of dishes. From sushi to paella, this versatile grain can do no wrong in the culinary world. While rice is most commonly thought of and served up as a savory dish, it also makes a wonderfully creamy and decadent dessert, in the form of rice pudding. It's hard to beat plain rice pudding with a sprinkle of cinnamon on top, but there are quite a few ways to get creative with flavors and come up with new rice pudding variations.

This zesty lemon cardamom rice pudding recipe, from the kitchen of recipe developer Jennine Rye, is simple to assemble and cook, and deeply satisfying to eat. There are few puddings as comforting as a warm bowl of well cooked rice pudding — in fact, lemon rice pudding was a favorite dessert of President Ulysses S. Grant. This recipe takes things a step further, complementing the bright and zesty flavor of lemon with warm, earthy, and floral notes of cardamom. The result is a deeply flavorful and deliciously creamy dessert that provides the perfect end to any meal.

To make this zesty lemon cardamom rice pudding recipe, you will need whole milk, heavy cream, granulated sugar, the zest of one lemon, a vanilla pod, one cardamom pod, short-grain white rice, and butter.

Add the milk, cream, sugar, lemon zest, vanilla pod, and cardamom pod to a large saucepan over medium heat.

Heat the mixture until it is simmering.

Add the rice to the saucepan.

Let the mixture gently simmer over low heat for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the rice is cooked through.

Remove the rice pudding from the heat and stir in the butter.

Serve warm or cold.

The flavors of lemon and cardamom work particularly well due to their slightly contrasting qualities, resulting in a bright and zingy yet warm and earthy spiced pudding that is sweet and oh so satisfying. If you are looking for some different flavor combinations or rice pudding upgrades, you'll be pleased to know that the sky is pretty much the limit when it comes to such a blank slate dessert. If cardamom isn't exactly your thing, the cardamom pod can be swapped out for a cinnamon stick or a spoonful of ground cinnamon to provide a similar spicy finish. Alternatively, pumpkin spice makes a delicious addition, or you can make a lemon chai spiced rice pudding by using a chai spice mix, or mixing up your own spice blend at home.

Instead of lemon, other citrus fruits work equally well. Lime zest will add a slightly more tropical quality to the dessert, and can be finished off with some diced mango or pineapple and some flaked coconut to really lean into the theme. Swapping out the lemon zest for orange zest will also work really well, and the orange taste will pair wonderfully with the spices. Moving away from citrus fruits, berries make a great swap-in for this dish, and can simply be folded into the finished rice pudding, or served beneath as a compote, or on top as a colorful, fruity garnish. Finally, adding a square of two of dark chocolate once the rice pudding has been removed from the heat will give you a deliciously decadent chocolatey pudding.

Choosing the right kind of rice for your recipes can be a bit mind boggling if you don't know the individual properties of different rice varieties and how they change the resulting dishes. Thankfully, both long-grain and short-grain varieties can work well for rice pudding, with each adding their own unique qualities. This lemon cardamom rice pudding recipe uses short-grain rice, more specifically, a particular rice variety that is commonly used for another creamy rice dish: risotto. Arborio or carnaroli are both types of short-grain rice that are revered in Italian recipes for good reason; their high starch content is released when cooked, creating a wonderfully thick and creamy texture, whilst the rice grains themselves don't disintegrate into mush. Perfect for a sweet dish like rice pudding.

Alternately, long-grain rice can also make an excellent option when cooking up rice pudding. Although it doesn't create the same wonderfully creamy texture as risotto rice, its particular properties mean that the grains hold their shape well when cooked in the milk and cream mixture, giving you a deliciously nostalgic dessert instead of a bowl of slop. We particularly recommend Basmati and Jasmine rice as great long-grain varieties for this dish.