Milk Rice Soup with Red Rice, Honey and Nuts

Milk Rice Soup with Red Rice

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Lately I’ve come to love milk rice soup with red rice. I don’t like milk porridges. They come from childhood, and everyone knows them. I, for one, couldn’t stand them. But my mother, grandmother and aunt thought quite differently. My attitude to porridge didn’t count, and milk porridge was on the table almost every day. You also have to remember that in those faraway times the choice of grain for porridge was limited to rice, buckwheat or vermicelli. Well, there was also millet, but that was for educational purposes. Still, say what you like, milk in those days was real milk.

Cooking porridge from sticky rice, or from “Soviet” pasta, was an art. Notably, that rice could absorb more water than Arborio. During cooking it turned sticky and swelled. That is why the porridge was called rice mush.

A more advanced dish than mush was milk soups. Just open any old cookbook and milk soups take up quite a few pages. Yet hardly anyone made milk soups.

Milk rice soup is a type, or variety, of soup. The liquid base of such soups is milk or cream, although a mix of water and milk is often used. And, of course, various grains.

But you can find recipes with different vegetables, noodles or pasta, and even mushrooms. Most often all the ingredients are cooked in plain water and only then is the milk added. It’s a little odd, but cooking vegetables or rice in pure milk is quite problematic.

One more important point. Milk-based soup is cooked over the lowest heat you can manage. The milk should barely simmer, otherwise it will simply burn. There is also a completely unique milk soup that is sweet, with dried fruit, sugar and honey.

More with rice

Ingredients

2 servings

  • Red rice 1 cup (180 g)
  • Water 2.5 cups (500 ml)
  • Raisins 0.5 cup (70 g)
  • Walnuts (kernels) 0.5 cup (50 g)
  • Milk (cream) 0.5 l
  • Butter 1 tbsp
  • Honey 3 tbsp (65 g)
  • Spices: vanilla, cinnamon to taste

Step-by-step recipe

Preparation

  1. Red rice is a variety of the well-known parboiled rice, apparently a sorted one. Still, there are known varieties of red rice, such as Bhutanese. Red rice differs from ordinary unpolished rice only in color. It is quite difficult and slow to cook. Cooking such rice directly in the soup, even an ordinary one, is very hard. So if you don’t have the skills, it is better to cook it separately.

  2. Rinse the red rice and soak it in cold water for 1 hour. There is no rice flour left from polishing, but there may be some bits of husk. It depends a lot on the packer.

    Red rice.

  3. Prepare the raisins and nuts. Rinse the raisins and soak them in warm water. Toast the nuts in a dry frying pan until they smell pleasant. By the way, you can easily toast nuts in the microwave: put the nut kernels on a saucer and run the oven for 1.5-2 minutes. That is enough.

How to cook the soup

  1. Cook the red rice. Bring 2.5 cups of water (500 ml) to a boil in a pot. Polished rice is usually cooked in water at a ratio of 1:2. Unpolished rice needs a little more water. Add 1 tbsp of butter, ground cinnamon and vanilla, a pinch to taste, to the water.

    Cooking the red rice.

    Add the soaked red rice to the boiling water, after draining it. As soon as the water starts to boil, cover the pot tightly with a lid and reduce the heat to the minimum. The rice cooks in about 25 minutes, but keep an eye on it in any case. There is no particular need to stir the rice while it cooks. But if you are used to cooking rice in a special way, cook it your way. The rice should be ready to eat, but the grains must never fall apart into mush.

  2. Bring the milk to a boil. While the rice cooks, boil the milk in a separate small pot. You can use light cream diluted with water. It’s up to you. It is important that the milk is natural and fresh, otherwise it will simply curdle.

  3. Add the soaked raisins and toasted nuts to the rice. Stir. Let it steam over low heat under a lid for 5 minutes.

    Adding the raisins.

  5. Pour the hot milk into the pot and stir. Bring to a boil and cook over low heat for 1-2 minutes.

    Pouring in the hot milk.

  6. Add honey to the milk rice soup. The amount of honey I give is approximate; use honey to your own taste. I recommend natural and the most fragrant honey. I took an excellent flower honey. Notably, the honey gave the soup an exceptional aroma.

    Adding honey.

    Bring the milk soup almost to a boil and turn off the heat. Let the milk soup stand for another 3-5 minutes.

Serving

  1. Ladle the rice soup into bowls, or better into tall small bowls. It will have a pleasant delicate pink tint and the scent of flowers. It’s something else.

    Soup with red rice.

  2. Serve the milk rice soup with red rice, honey and nuts hot, and eat it right away.

    Milk rice soup

Calories and macros

900 kcal

Serving ≈ 630 g

  • Protein20 g9% of kcal
  • Fat33 g33% of kcal
  • Carbs132 g58% of kcal

100 g144 kcalProtein 3.2 gFat 5.3 gCarbs 21.1 g

Calculated from the recipe ingredients, excluding salt and spices. Data: USDA and Matvaretabellen.

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