Swedish Yule Rice ice cream
 
A somewhat Scandinavian take on Gelato di riso (Rice gelato), prepared on what is basically a classic Swedish Christmas rice porridge recipe. Please note that this recipe makes for quite a lot of ice cream - you may want to scale down the ingredients to half in order to bring down the volume towards 1 litre (about 4 cups).
Ingredients
  • 230 ml (1 cup) short-grain (a k a round-grain) rice
  • 1½ litre (6.5 cups) whole milk
  • 150 ml (2/3 cup) cream
  • 230 ml (1 cup) sugar
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 cinnamon stick
  • 6 egg yolks
  • Some ground cinnamon and caster sugar to sprinkle on top of the ice cream.
  • optionally) a peeled almond for rhyming-purposes
Instructions
  1. Heat 950 ml (4 cups) of the milk, together with 70 ml (5½ tablespoons) sugar, and the salt.
  2. Carefully bring to a boil (to avoid milk-overflow;-), then reduce the heat. Add the rice and the cinnamon stick and let simmer for 1 hour on low heat. Stir frequently, making sure that nothing sticks on the bottom of the pan. If necessary, add more milk to the porridge (we don't want it to dry up and/or getting burnt).
  3. When the rice porridge is tender and ready, set aside to cool, (and then to chill, eventually) and begin preparing the actual custard base:
  4. Beat together 150 ml (2/3 cup) sugar and the egg yolks.
  5. Combine the remaining 600 ml (2½ cups) milk, and the cream in a sauce pan. Little by little, and while whisking constantly, add the hot milk/cream mixture to the egg/sugar mix (the tempering phase).
  6. Pour everything back into the sauce pan, and - while stirring constantly with a spatula - bring the mixture to about 82-84 degrees Celsius (179-183º F) on low-moderate heat.
  7. Quickly take off from the heat and cool as quickly as possible (in waterbath, ice bath or cold exteriors).
  8. When cooled down, chill the ice cream base in the fridge, preferably over night and at least for a few hours.
  9. Finally, remove the cinnamon stick from the rice porridge and (depending on your preferences regarding more or less noticeable rice grains in the final product) purée all, or half of it (or all of it, but not very thoroughly) in a blender or similar. Stir the rice purée-part back into the rest of the rice porridge and whip it gently together with the custard base.
  10. Churn the now complete ice cream base in your ice cream machine according to instructions (or still-freeze without a machine, described elsewhere on this blog).
  11. When churning is finished, put in freezer-proof container, cover with plastic film and seal with lid. Put in the freezer.
  12. Before serving, sprinkle a little ground cinnamon and some caster sugar over the ice cream. If you feel playful (and if there are no allergy-issues), add a single peeled almond in the ice cream to be served - the one who gets the almond will be required to deliver a (hopefully) inspired rhyme by the table, to everyone's enjoyment.
Notes
This is unfortunately an ice cream which will freeze pretty solid when left in the freezer for a while! It is therefore best enjoyed fresh - enjoy it straight after churning or at least the same day you have made it. If you have to put it in the freezer for longer, just remember to take it out to soften quite some time before serving it (likely at least about +30 minutes or so). If you are impatient, you might like to speed up the process a bit by putting the ice cream into a micro wave oven. Just remember that it is seldom a good idea to try to re-freeze ice cream once it has began to melt down ... something which holds particularly true for micro-waved ice cream;-).
Recipe by ICE CREAM NATION at https://www.icecreamnation.org/2011/12/swedish-yule-rice-ice-cream/