Kheer Challenge

The pretty yellow flowers are just for garnish.

Have you ever had the rice pudding at an Indian restaurant? It is delicious, and it's always a treat when I find that a restaurant has it on their dessert menu. It's milk-based, with soft grains of rice, cooked in and garnished with spices. Sometimes, there are nuts in there, like almond slivers or bits of pistachio. I've read that it can also be prepared with vermicelli noodles and that raisins can be added, but I'm not too keen on those preferences. I'm a raisin hater. And noodles in something sweet is anomalous.

I found out from a friend that this delightful rice pudding is called "kheer," and it's a well-known dessert in India and in neighboring countries of Pakistan, Iran, and Nepal. I wanted to make this kheer for myself because I can tell by the ingredients that it would be simple to prepare, and I had many of them on-hand.

For my kheer, I used soaked Basmati rice, chia seeds, condensed milk, and some locally sourced grass-fed goat milk (Lucky Hook Farm in Moses Lake!). For the spices, I used cardamon, anise, and sugar.

What I thought would take 30-40 minutes ended up taking a little over two hours! Initially at half an hour, I thought the kheer was done, but the rice wasn't soft, and too much milk had evaporated. It tasted like I just threw cooked rice into some sweet milk, and that was not what I was going for. The texture has to be right. It's simple, sure, but constantly stirring and watching over the mixture take time. So I just kept adding water and stirring, cooking slowly over low heat until the grains had all softened and the milk was lightly thick. When I was completely satisfied as to how it turned out, it was already almost midnight. I started at about 9:30, after dinner.

When I do this again, I'll make sure to heat the goat milk first, then slowly add in the condensed milk. Maybe I won't even use condensed milk next time and just add more sugar. I had a problem with the condensed milk scalding too soon despite the stirs. For my first time making it, though, I would say it's pretty decent. :) OK, fine, I told my friend Marian via Messenger that it was bomb three times with an animated sticker on the third instance.

Stirring, stirring, more stirring

Putting the kheer in cute jars like this one for later