How To Make Rice Pudding Southern Style by Mama Reed
This is Mama Reed’s famous baked rice pudding recipe. It creates a rich comforting dessert that anyone who likes rice pudding will love!
Of course, Mama Reed was an amazing cook. Like the other matriarchs in my family, she was adept at making do with what ingredients were on hand and affordable, which made rice a regular ingredient for her cooking (even now, we all love a bowl of hot rice served with butter and sugar for breakfast). Most rice puddings are cooked in a pot on top of the stove, but our family has always baked rice pudding.
What is Rice Pudding?
Rice pudding is rice cooked in sweetened milk. As the rice cooks with the ingredients the starch in it creates a rich and creamy dish. You can start with uncooked rice or cooked rice. See information below for using both.
Why Bake Rice Pudding?
Baking this dish only requires stirring once or twice (depending on if you are using cooked or uncooked rice) versus frequent stirring if made on the stovetop. But what I love most of all about rice pudding when it is baked, is it develops a wonderful custard and transforms into a rich and comforting dessert. This pudding would be served at dinner for dessert and any leftovers could be re-served for breakfast. True comfort food. I’m sure Mama Reed would be proud to know we’re still loving it today.
Ingredients you’ll need:
- White Rice
- Eggs
- Milk
- Sugar
- Salt
- Raisins
- Cinnamon
- Vanilla
Actual recipe is at the bottom of this page.
How to Make Baked Rice Pudding
First off… cook up your rice. It will be added later in the recipe.
Stir it up til it looks like this.
Bake at 300 degrees for 90 minutes.
After the first thirty minutes of baking, stir from the bottom.
Scoop and serve in fancy schmancy crystal glass wear or even better…regular cups or bowls will do!
Do I Have to Cook The Rice?
Ingredients
- 4 eggs beaten
- 3 cups milk
- 1 cup sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 2 teaspoons vanilla
- 2 cups cooked rice
- 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/2 cup raisins
Instructions
- Cook up your rice. Beat eggs. Stir in sugar. Add other ingredients. Stir.
- Spray oven proof casserole dish with Pam. Pour mixture into dish.
- Set dish in pan of hot water and bake at 300 degrees for 90 minutes.
- After 30 minutes of cooking insert spoon at edge of pudding and stir from the bottom to distribute rice and raisins.
Christy, I am the odd-ball of this group. I do not like rice pudding but my husband and neighbors went wild over it. I doubled the recipe and 5 people licked the baking dish clean. Thank you so much for the wonderful recipe that is now in my book of must keep recipes. I have been saving recipes for over 40 years now and I am in the process of putting together a cookbook for my daughters 40th birthday. It will reveal all the secrets to my best recipes that she has grown up with and requested (to no avail) over the years. This recipe will be the first and formost in the pudding section. Thanks again.
Christy, I love your stories that go along with your recipes. My husband loves rice pudding, but I’ve never found a recipe like my mom made. Your recipe looks like the perfect one – I’ll have to make this recipe for him. Thanks!
The rice pudding recipe is nearly identical to my sweet Grandma Belknaps. She always added nutmeg to hers. My Grandpa would tease us kids telling us the raisins were bugs. I think he hoped we wouldn’t eat it and there would be more for him. Ha! We new better. There was nothing my Grandma cooked that was bad. Love going down memory lane with you.
This took me back to my childhood. My mama always baked her rice pudding too. She made this and ‘Nilla wafer banana pudding (including making the custard from scratch) regularly. I was a lucky girl but I didn’t know it then!
I hate to be the downer here, but I made this recipe, being very meticulous about the amounts, and it’s very runny and liquid after 90 minutes of baking. The other recipes I’ve found online are smaller in volume and recommend 90 minutes of baking at 325. Is there a typo in the oven temperature or time?
I love all of your recipes and have been trying quite a few of them. I am from Canada and I don’t have any Southern roots. But these recipes are so similar to those made by my grandmothers, great aunts, older family friends and other older relatives. My Mom has a lot of these recipes written down and I have been trying to accumulate them and compile a book of sorts of stuff from the family and family favourites. I have been verifying what we have to what you post and they are almost right on. Rice pudding is one of my favourites and I make it on a regular basis, If I cook rice and there is some left over, I have it for breakfast with some milk and sugar. Everyone thinks I am a bit nutty, and perhaps they are right.. I must say that growing up we never went hungry but there wasn’t always quite enough and being the oldest I sometimes did without some of the items on the menu for supper. But as long as I had some potatoes or rice a few other things added to the rice would suffice.
I thrive on getting comments on my cooking. The other day I made cabbage rolls (there’s my rice) and shared some with my sister. Her compliment was that they taste just like Nana’s (our Mom) YUMMMMM. I was thrilled – Mom taught me well. I made the Corn Salad to take to a 50th Birthday Party tonight – I sampled already and oh it is delicious. So “this lady from up North” is sure enjoying these Southern Place recipes.
Thanks so much
Sorry I edited my own post – should have read that I am sure enjoying these recipes from Southern places on Southern Plate Front Porch
My brother thinks he has to dig deeper into the family tree to see if we have relatives from the “south”
Some of these recipes are word for word what has been passed down for generations
Thank you Christy
Christy,
I just love getting your emails – with all the crazy emails we get -yours are a breath of fresh air! I’m from the north but I grew up with rice with milk and sugar for supper. I still make it for my family. We cook the rice and put into individual bowls, heat up milk in the microwave, and put brown sugar on the rice (and sometimes a little butter), pour over the milk and stir and eat. It’s an inexpensive supper and great for those evening meals that are really running late. I’m gonna try the rice pudding too cause we love rice pudding. God bless!