Rice pudding a second time in a year. I don’t even know who I am anymore. This time, I use full-fat milk and a rice cooker. A Hamilton Beach Rice Cooker to be exact. A sample was provided to me to facilitate this recipe, and I’m giving you all the deets today! And I don’t even use the rice cooking setting on it for this recipe, so I’m breaking all sorts of rules today. How else can we make this easy rice pudding?

I mean, look at it. Of course, it’s topped with tons of cinnamon and nutmeg for that spicy finish, but I think that I’m finally a fan of rice pudding. I can not even begin to tell you how I didn’t expect to write that sentence during my lifetime. I legit thought that rice pudding wasn’t worth human consumption. Oh, how I’m eating grains! I’m still not going to mess with bread pudding any time soon. I can only do so much experimenting this year. 

With this recipe, we’re using the hot cereal setting on the Hamilton Beach Rice Cooker, and it’s going to allow us to cook the rice pudding at a controlled rate instead of a preset time for the white or whole grain rice. With the hot cereals setting you can go from their preset of 5 minutes up to the 30 minutes we cook this rice pudding for. 

I was able to cook this for an early treat for the kids – aka my taste testers – and they weren’t too sad about it. They also informed me that while my first go at rice pudding was okay and tasty enough, this one was much better. I’m guessing it’s because the flavor was able to infuse into the rice in a way that it can’t in an open pot. 

I couldn’t figure out a way to essentially get this done without a second pot, but when I realized that the lowest time on the hot cereal was less than 10 minutes, I figured I could use that time to heat the milk enough to dissolve the sugar that the rice pudding would need. You don’t want to use heat/simmer because you run the risk of boiling the milk and getting that nasty milk skin on top. Yuck. 

After you get past that initial heating of the pot, you’re all good. Adding the rest of the ingredients and giving it a final stir before cooking it for 25 more minutes, and you’re set. 

Of course, the rice cooker can cook more than just rice. It can steam vegetables – which we do often – mostly broccoli and cauliflower – but you can do more than that. We’ve made Hoppin’ John, and even rice and mushrooms, but I want to perfect that recipe before sharing. So stay tuned for it. 

Now for what you’re really wanting to know, the recipe: 

Easy Rice Pudding