Easy creamy Thai inspired rice pudding that’s filled with coconut and taro. It can be eaten both hot or cold and is completely gluten free, vegan and refined sugar free!
Summer time is finally here and Vancouver’s looking absolutely gorgeous out these days. We’ve been sitting at wonderful 20 degrees all week! That doesn’t happen very often for us. We tend to not experience summer until late July or early August most years.
Anyways, I don’t know about you all but what I look forward to the most after a long day of being out in the sunshine and gardening up a storm…is a nice bowl of cold dessert. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m usually all about having the homemade banana nicecream or fruity sorbets this time of the year (or any time of the year for that matter), but being that I’ve been having nicecream for breakfast practically every day this week…I decided that I wanted something else for a mid day snack.
I was about to make coconut panna cotta but then I realized that it would take waaaayyy too long to set so I decided to whip up a batch of taro coconut rice pudding instead! Of course you don’t need to put the taro in there if you don’t have it lying around the fridge like I did (hurray for reducing, reusing and recycling food!), but I think it adds a nice bit of texture to the pudding.
Another thing you can add to take this tropical rice pudding to a whole ‘nother level are mango chunks! This little discovery actually happened by accident because lil’ bun accidentally dropped a piece of her mango into my bowl while she was reaching over me and after that, there was no going back… And I ended up stealing the rest of her mangoes to put in my rice pudding She wasn’t very happy about that but my tummy sure was!
Coconut taro rice pudding
Ingredients (6 servings)
- 1 1/2 cup glutinous rice, soaked overnight (can sub brown or white rice but don’t soak)
- 2 cups diced taro
- 1/3 – 1/2 cup coconut nectar or maple syrup (depends on how sweet you like it)
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 3 cups coconut water (or water)
- 1 cup full fat canned coconut milk
- optional: shredded coconut flakes for garnish
Instructions
- Bring the coconut water up to a boil in a pot on medium high heat. While the water is coming up to a boil, rinse the glutinous rice in cold water.
- Add the rice to the pot and cook it for 15 – 20 minutes on medium-low heat until the rice is tender. Make sure that you stir the pot every so often to make sure that it doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pot.
- Add in the diced taro, coconut milk, coconut nectar, and salt. Simmer until the taro is tender. Turn off the heat.
- Stir the rice pudding until any excess liquid has absorbed by the rice. If your rice is not absorbing the liquid after 5 minutes, combine 2 teaspoons cornstarch with 1 teaspoon water in a small bowl and add it to the pot.
- When the rice pudding reaches desired consistency, transfer it into serving bowls and serve immediately or allow it to chill in the fridge for 2 – 3 hours if you prefer your rice pudding cold.
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Never tried taro–sounds so good!
Taro IS so good! But it’s hard to find uses for it after a while because it’s so starchy that it can really be eaten cooked!
I often substitute light coconut milk for full fat- do you think that’s a mistake? Looks yummy- love your mango accident too. 🙂
Hmm…I think that it’s not too big of a deal substituting light for full fat in most recipes but some recipes you need the full fat texturally to make it turn out properly! Especially with panna cotta!
What yummy sounding rice pudding! While I’ve certainly eaten taro in sweet forms, I’ve never actually cooked it myself. And what exciting garden plans you have! Speaking of the weather, we’re always envious of Vancouver here, at least during the winter, haha 😉
Surprisingly we didn’t have too cold of a winter here this year only a day or two of snowfall! Goodness that global warming is really doing it’s thing!
Yay! Coconut and taro together is heaven. I remember when I was a child, my Mom always makes something like taro in coconut milk and it’s so good. There is no doubt how good is it. Thanks for sharing, Cynthia. This brings back childhood memories. 🙂 Happy FF. xx
I haven’t had taro in forever and even then it was in a specific pudding so interested to try it with other things like this.