Sweet Rice Kheer – a Lightened Up Dessert

We sweetened this kheer with a touch of brown sugar and spiced it with cardamom. While it’s great on its own, the addition of some golden raisins bring up the kheer’s sweetness, and some pecans give it a nice bit of crunchy texture. Plus, we’ve lightened things up with some low-fat milk, making it a delicious, guilt-free dessert.

Last summer, we went on a food adventure for our 16th anniversary, and checked out a place we’d never been to before. We chose the aptly-named India in Providence, as we both wanted to try some authentic Indian food. We made a point to order something that wasn’t entirely in our comfort zones, forcing us to try something new. Our dinner was fantastic, and a couple of months later we went back for their lunch buffet. It was the buffet that introduced me to kheer.

A Lesson in Kheer

Kheer is an Indian rice pudding. At its most basic, kheer is just rice, milk, and sugar. From there, you can add some dried fruits, nuts, and spice to add more flavor to it. I’m not certain what those cooks put into it at the India restaurant, but it was absolutely amazing.

I wanted to try India’s kheer because it was only one of two things in the buffet line that wasn’t something I’d tried before. However, knowing it was a rice pudding, I was hesitant. Rice pie was a tradition in my father’s family, and I hated it. I mean, they’d make these enormous pans of this lumpy mixture of rice, ricotta cheese, and eggs. Everyone loved it – except me.

The weird mix of textures that were similar, but just different enough to have a strange mouth feel, completely ruined rice pie for me. In my opinion, it didn’t really taste like anything in particular. The blandness of the rice took over, and the flavors of the cheese, eggs, and citrus weren’t strong enough to come through in a way that actually tasted good. To me, rice pie was nearly synonymous with rice pudding. I assumed that the kheer would be nothing more than a loose rice pie.

Oh, how wrong I was.

Replicating the flavors and reducing the guilt

I did some poking around to see how a basic kheer was made, and all the recipes were pretty much the same base: rice, milk, and sugar. Some used cooked rice, others raw, and there were variations in the milk used. Many of the recipes added different spices, but cardamom was by far the most common. From there, the rice kheer was simply a matter of sweetness and the proportions of the common ingredients.

Once the basics were locked down, we made some changes, making our kheer just as sweet and creamy as any other, with a bit less guilt. Most of the kheer I’d seen used whole milk or, in some cases, sweetened condensed milk. Instead, we used 1% milk, cutting down some of the fat and calories we’d get from whole milk without losing any of the creaminess that makes a good kheer.

One of the other changes we made was using brown sugar in addition to white sugar in our kheer. This change deepened the sweetness a bit. We also used plenty of golden raisins, which added their own sweetness to the dish. A handful of chopped nut added during the last stage of cooking give the kheer a slightly savory flavor and keep the texture of the dish from being too mushy.

Getting greedy

I’m lucky – the Beard isn’t particularly fond of kheer, so I can make a batch and keep it in the fridge and it will last me a while. It keeps well, and the last batch I made kept for at least a week in an airtight container. I took some to work for lunch, or ate it as a late night snack. I’d probably eat it for breakfast if I’d thought of it while I still had some. As a bonus, it’s good warm or chilled.

And it was all mine. MINE.

Have you given this recipe a try, or do you have an idea of what could be improved?  Leave us a comment below!  We’d love to hear from you!

– Tart & Beard

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Sweet Rice Kheer – Lightened Up

We sweetened this kheer with a touch of brown sugar and spiced it with cardamom. While it’s great on its own, the addition of some golden raisins bring up the kheer’s sweetness, and some pecans give it a nice bit of crunchy texture. Plus, we’ve lightened things up with some low-fat milk, making it a delicious, guilt-free dessert.  

Course Dessert, Snack

Cuisine Indian

Keyword kheer, light, milk, nuts, raisins, rice

Prep Time 30 minutes

Cook Time 25 minutes

Total Time 55 minutes

Servings 6

Calories 215 kcal

Ingredients

For rice kheer recipe:

• ½ cup Basmati rice
• 5 cups 1% milk
• ½ cup sugar, minus 1 tbsp
• 1 tbsp brown sugar
• ½ tsp cardamom powder
• 2 tbsps chopped nuts almonds or pecans work nicely
• 2 tbsps golden raisins plus more for topping if desired

Instructions

Preparation

1. Wash the rice under running cold water until the water runs clear.  The easiest way to do this is by using a fine mesh sieve for this, just keep swirling the rice around while the water runs.  You can also combine the rice and some water in a bowl and swirl things around, drain the water, and repeat the process until the water is clear.

2. Soak the rice in water for 20-30 minutes.  Once soaked, drain the water from the rice.

Making the Kheer

1. Using a medium saucepan, bring the milk to a boil over medium heat.

2. Add your soaked rice to the milk.  Lower the heat and let the mixture simmer over a medium-low heat for 20-25 minutes, or until the rice is tender.  Give the mixture a stir every five minutes to make sure your mixture isn’t sticking to the pan.  You want the rice to be soft, and the mixture to be loose and the two ingredients to still separate.

3. Add the sugar, brown sugar and cardamom into the rice and milk, mixing until the sugars have dissolved completely.  

4. Add the nuts and raisins, stirring to combine everything in the pan.  
   

5. Let the kheer simmer for 5-7 minutes.  It will thicken up during this time, and you’re looking for a mixture that won’t separate when poured out of a ladle.  

The Tart

The Tart likes to eat, cook, and bake things.  She eats to work out, and she works out to be able to eat.