Rice Porridge

[fred_mouse]

For those who, like me, also can't tolerate oats, and for whom porridge is a sadly missed breakfast, I'm making notes on what I've been experimenting on for rice porridge. In the past, I've made it from whole rice (white or brown) and it takes a while. Today, I've tried idli rava, which is sold in my local Indian grocery with the english name 'rice semolina'.

Today's experiment was based very loosely on a semolina recipe out of a Hari Krishna cookbook I acquired multiple decades ago. I've used butter, but most cooking oils work (I've tried most of the ones in my cupboard, in the years when I still ate wheat. Olive makes it taste funny, but works if you want to turn this savoury by using stock). For my next experiment, I'm going to omit the oil, and see whether 'dry roasting' the rice works.

equipment: a whisk/wooden spoon, a saucepan, some way of boiling water separately. I use the whisk for all stirring in this recipe, but I've seen people doing the whole thing with a wooden spoon.
ingredients: butter, idli rava, water, treacle (by which I mean Australian treacle, which I gather some places would call molasses). Because I had them to use up, I've also put in some desiccated coconut and some hazelnut meal -- anything like this can go in at the same time as the idli rava. Quantities are pretty flexible, as long as you aim to use around twice the volume of water as dry ingredients.

1. Boil water. Leave it sit until you need it.
2. Butter/oil goes in pan. I'm guessing I used 50g. If I were doing it with oil, I am to coat the bottom with about 3mm of oil.
3. When that has warmed slightly/butter has melted, add the dry ingredients. I use between 1.5 and 2 cups -- I eyeball it, because it is something I've made a lot, and I have three young adults in the house, so it gets eaten. Stir until the oil is evenly coating the dry ingredients
4. Cook for 'a bit'. This is a matter of taste - the more 'roasted' a flavour you want, the longer it cooks here. If you want a bland porridge (which is what I was after), do it for about two minutes.
5. Turn of heat/take pot off heat. Make sure it is in a spot where splashes won't matter, and make sure that you are safely covered. The next step can splash a lot. Make a well in the dry ingredients, pour in water until it is full. If the water touches the metal of the saucepan you will definitely get large splashes.
6. Stir. Add more water. Stir. The texture you are after is a thick batter - you can move the whisk/spoon through the mixture, but it isn't easy. Depending on how brave you are with adding water, you might need several iterations of this.
7. Cook for a further 5 minutes.
8. Right at the end, stir through the treacle. This is a 'to taste' thing.