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 want to make Mama Reed’s recipe but I don’t know what “stir from the bottom” means. I think this is the first time I’ve ever heard the term. Thanks!
Make sure your spoon scrapes the bottom of the bowl as you stir so you get all of that stirred up in it.
We just talk funny in my family 🙂
LOL I can do that! 😉
Gorgeous back yard!!! Love it!
Thank you Vicki, it is going to make Mama’s day to hear that!!
Christi,
I recently discovered rice pudding at my local store, they had a no sugar added variety that was wonderful, they quit carrying the no sugar added one so I have been looking for one to make from scratch. Have you tried using stevia or spenda in place of sugar?
We make it with Splenda all the time!!!
Hi Christy, I have. “Reed” in my ALabama family line. If you get a chance and want to, please send me a note if you are related to the Reed family from Millry/Silas area. Best Regards,
I will have to ask and get back to you on that 🙂
Christy, my momma always baked the rice pudding, it was a treat when we got it, it wasn’t the expense but the fact my mother was ill that kept it from being a more often served dish. The only differences between hers and yours is she used canned milk and added nutmeg, just about everything had nutmeg.
As a result do you now love or hate nutmeg?
Actually love nutmeg, oddly enough both my brother and I hated cloves which mom loved, she rarely used them in cooking, adding a tiny amount so we would eat whatever it was. But we never complained about the nutmeg. She made cookies with caraway seeds which we loved, not a lot of people like strong aromatics like caraway and dill.
I am so looking forward to trying this recipe! My friend James has told me on several occasions about his mother’s rice pudding growing up as a boy in Virginia.
James will buy store bought rice pudding cups and stir in raisins and cinnamon. (Blech, it’s God awful)
From the best I can tell with his stories your family recipe may be what I need to make the dish. Afterall who doesn’t deserve a heaping, healthy serving of childhood memories? Thank you for sharing!
I love it!! Yes, everyone deserves a big serving of childhood on occasion and what a great friend you are to be the one to serve it up!!
After reading through many recipes online yours sounds to be the closest to my Moms. It is in the oven now and I hope it’s close. I can’t ask my Mom for her recipe because she passed away in 2014.
I hope it ends up exactly like your Moms!! Have a Merry Christmas Laura!!