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.
My mamma always baked rice pudding for dessert with stuffed bell peppers. It was always great. But she never put gets in hot water bath. She just put it in the oven and baked it, for what seemed like forever, waiting for it. But it was with the wait.
Do you cover the dish while baking? I make a very similar recipe, no water bath though, and covered dish.
Christie , I have the baked rice pudding in the oven right now formy two grandbabies….It’s really a easy recipe to follow..Thank you for sharing it with us..
Hi Jane!!! You are so welcome and I hope everyone enjoyed it!!
Christy;
My mom and dad had 12 children. I grew up in a poor but hard working family. Rice pudding was one of my favorite desserts served at my mom’s table. I use to help her fix it when I was a small child. After cooking the rice pudding on the stove, she would put it in a big stone platter with merengue on top , then place it in the oven untill the merengue was lightly brown.
Christy, I can’t tell you how many times I have made this Baked Rice Pudding! My husband has celiac disease & must eat gluten free. Between this and the Monster Cookies, those are his very favorite deserts! This pudding is in the oven right now. I have one question. I always have to bake a good bit longer than the recipe indicates and it occurred to me that I may be misunderstanding the instructions. After baking for 30 minutes in the hot water bath and taking out to stir, do you put back into the pan of hot water, or just put the casserole back into the oven without the pan of hot water? I have been leaving in the pan of hot water the entire baking time. Thanks.
Hey Dianne!! I am so glad you are enjoying it!! Your husband is so blessed to have such a resourceful and loving wife! I continue cooking it in the water bath. It may be that your oven and mine are cooking it at different temperatures, this is pretty common. I’m about to get a new oven in a few months so I’ll have to see if that changes my cook times!
I AM ABOUT TO MAKE THIS ..MY DAD USED TO MAKE RICE PUDDING, ALWAYS HAD 2-3 INCHES OF CUSTARD ON TOP. HE ALWAYS SAID TO ADD ANN EXTRA EGG FOR MORE CUSTARD! I HAVE MADE THE PUDDING BEFORE, BUT THE RECIPES I USED NEVER CALLED FOR STIRRING HALFWAY THRU.
I AM AFRAID THE CUSTARD WON’T RISE TO THE TOP! DOES IT, IF YOU STIR IT?
THANKS.
Made the rice pudding yesterday afternoon, and, IT IS ALL GONE. Haven’t made rice pudding in over 20 years, and I wasn’t really sure if anyone besides my self would really like it. Got my answer when I went to have a bite.
The rice is cooking for the new batch, maybe this one will last more than a few hours.
LOL, it disappears fast at my house too Jace!! I hope you get to enjoy the second batch!!
I used large eggs and 2% milk. Very good taste with a smooth creamy consistency. Thank you for sharing your recipe. I am going to put it on broil for 5 minutes at the last to mimic that slighty crispy scum on the top I remember. Just may make it the very best I’ve had since childhood.
Christy i have been looking for this for a long time,as a child i grew up on a farm in little river alabama, we were very poor and my aunt “sis” was an old maid who did all the cooking for us while we worked in the fields,she would make us rice puddings for deserts,she passed away at 93 and left us her recipe but we could not get it quite right,for no one knew to put it in the pan of water.i do recall when i was sick one day and staying home with her that she put it in a pan of water but i was too small to understand how and why, thank you so much for showing how your family did this because this is what i remember my aunt doing so many years ago…..