You Only Need 4 Ingredients To Make A Rich And Creamy Chocolate Rice Pudding

Rice pudding is a decadent treat that makes for a lick-your-spoon kind of dessert. While there are more elaborate recipes, like this caramel rice pudding, you don't have to overcomplicate it (you can even make great rice pudding in your slow cooker). In fact, we wondered if it could be as simple as four ingredients: rice, water (for cooking the rice), chocolate, and, for a surprising twist, a knob of miso. Food Republic spoke to Kierin Baldwin, chef-instructor of Pastry & Baking Arts at the Institute of Culinary Education's New York City campus, and she weighed in on this combination. "The chocolate and rice would contribute a rich creaminess to the dessert, which could help compensate for the lack of dairy," she said.

Though Baldwin hasn't tried the combination herself, she continued, "The chocolate alone would likely provide enough sweetness ... If you used milk chocolate, the milk solids it contains would also add to the creaminess." For a balanced flavor, however, she recommended "using a lower-percentage dark chocolate or milk chocolate." 

Baldwin was also fully on board with miso, a savory, umami paste with a hummus-like consistency, made from fermented beans. But she did offer one caveat: "I love miso in sweet dishes, so I like the idea of using it here — but it should be used sparingly to avoid making the pudding overly salty." Just a touch can help cut through the sweetness of the chocolate while adding complexity to a very simple dessert.

Making this dessert is as simple as throwing all four ingredients into a rice cooker (about one bar of chocolate should suffice for one cup of rice) and, once the rice is finished, mixing and fluffing them together. However, the type and quality of your ingredients matter. Kierin Baldwin specified that she would use chocolate "in the [54 to 64%] range, as it would add enough sweetness to the pudding to balance out both the lack of added sugar and the saltiness of the miso."

She continued, "For a creamy rice pudding, I like to use short-grain rice such as Arborio or Carnaroli, which are starchy and become luxuriously creamy as they cook" (though you might also try Ina Garten's favorite hybrid basmati rice). She further related that her favorite way to make rice pudding is actually with day-old, leftover cooked rice, as it "easily absorbs liquid, and its starches break down slightly to give the pudding a rich, creamy texture."

As for the miso, you can use red or white; you don't have to worry about the red kind giving your rice pudding a ghastly color, because the chocolate is going to darken everything anyway. But because red miso imparts a stronger flavor, you might want to use less than if you used white. You can also use sweet miso if you can find it, as then you'll have less of the saltiness to balance out.