Sooner or later in the life of any person, a moment comes when he realizes that the time has come to start eating right. And of course, of course, it is difficult when you need to cook something new in conditions of need.
You can start with the simplest and learn the recipe for making rice porridge with pumpkin. You can safely try this dish in the morning for breakfast and write it in the cookbook, because it is very simple, but very tasty!
Introduction to "Right Learning"
This combination of words may scare you, but there is nothing to worry about. Yes, and in fact, eating right is even more interesting than buying ready-to-cook foods in stores.
So, if it came to breakfast, then a delicious rice porridge with pumpkin in a slow cooker will be a real find for you.
Firstly, it can be prepared in advance, for example, in the evening, and by morning it will “open” even more and infuse.
Secondly, porridge is the best idea to start any day, especially winter and cold, when you are too lazy to get out of bed. But the thought of a ready-made warm dish will help you cope with all the difficulties!
And finally, rice porridge with pumpkin in a pan, slow cooker, pot, and anything else, just cook anyway, and inexpensive ingredients make this recipe even more intriguing.
Variety of cereals
Choosing rice for cooking today's dish does not mean that it is the only one that goes well with pumpkin and other vegetables. It is also great to add it to millet or oatmeal.
And most importantly, the presence of milk does not play a big role here, which means that lean rice porridge with pumpkin will stand on a par with its fatter counterpart, containing butter and other animal products.
After preparing this dish, we would not advise you to concentrate on it for a long time, but rather, experiment as often as possible, add and mix something new.
Thus, you will quickly determine the ingredients you like most, which means you will learn how to cook properly and tasty faster!
Choosing the right pumpkin
Since this ingredient is one of the main ones in the dish, you need to approach its choice wisely. Of course, it is better that it was a independently grown vegetable from your garden, of which you are 100% sure.
The fact is that rice porridge with pumpkin may not work out just because of the wrong kind of vegetable. Choose the least watery, hard, but sweet and spicy varieties. The stronger the natural smell of pumpkin will be, the more aromatic the resulting dish will turn out.
Therefore, before you buy a vegetable, it is best to ask the seller for help. You can tell him about the purpose of the pumpkin, after which it will be easier for him to find a suitable option.
In addition, if you buy a pumpkin in its seasonal time, then you may even be able to find portioned slices prepared in advance.
List of ingredients
In order to decide on the products, you should decide which dish you want to get, lean or regular. When the choice is made, then feel free to take the list and go to the store, although most likely you already have everything you need at home.
You will need the following products:
- Rice - 1 cup. In this case, it is necessary to take the simplest option - with round rather than elongated grain. Usually this is the cheapest kind of rice, since it is not suitable for making loose pilaf, but only for various porridge-like dishes.
- Milk - 400 ml.
- Water - 600 ml.
- Pumpkin - 400 g
- Sugar, salt - to taste.
- Butter to taste.
The first recipe: rice porridge with pumpkin in milk
Now the only thing left is small, so let's proceed to the process itself, which we will write down in points:
- We clean the pumpkin from hard peels and seeds, which can then be dried in the oven and added to the finished dish. We cut it into cubes, fill it with hot water and cook over low heat for 15-20 minutes until softened.
- Grind the boiled pumpkin to a puree state (this can be done with a fork, a blender or even left in its original form) and proceed to cooking rice cereal.
- We wash dry rice with water to remove excess dust and natural starch. As soon as the transparent water begins to drain from it, it means that you can already fill it with cold water and send it to the stove.
- Boiled rice is cooked for another 10-15 minutes until all moisture disappears, after which we throw the cereal into a colander.
- In a separate pan we heat the milk, then pour in the swollen rice and cook for about 30 minutes.
- Once the set time has passed, you can safely add pumpkin, sugar and butter, mix everything thoroughly on fire, and then, removing the pan from the stove, carefully wrap the bowl of porridge with warm towels. Thus, rice porridge with pumpkin in milk will reach its ideal state, while the walls of the container will slowly cool, giving their heat inward.
Minor corrections
But since rice porridge with pumpkin can be a lean dish, we will offer you such an alternative. But in order to make the recipe more original and at least slightly different from the previous one, we will add several new components:
- Pumpkin - 400 g
- Rice (about its variety can be read in the first list) - 1 glass.
- Water - 1 l.
- Sugar, salt - to taste.
- Nuts, dried fruits - to taste. In this case, dried apricots and prunes mix wonderfully with pumpkin, but if there is nothing but raisins, then it can also do just fine. Choose nuts based on your own preferences. We, for example, take walnuts, although in their place there may even be ordinary sunflower or pumpkin seeds.
The second recipe: lean rice porridge with slices of pumpkin, nuts and dried fruits
First of all, you need to prepare the dried apricots, prunes, raisins or dates that you have chosen. Pre-rinse everything under running water, remove the seeds or damaged parts and pour boiling water in a small container so that the liquid completely covers the entire contents.
We simply transfer the nuts into the container, frying them in a dry pan in advance, if desired. Thus, thin husks can easily be removed from nuts, and the taste will become much brighter.
In the meantime, until the dried fruits are soaked, we put the pre-cleaned pumpkin to boil, rinse the rice in a separate container to clean water and also boil it.
In the process of cooking pumpkin, you can pour a few glasses of vegetable broth, then add it to the dish for a more intense pumpkin flavor.
We discard the cooked rice in a colander, and meanwhile in a separate pan we heat the pumpkin "broth". As soon as it boils, pour the rice into it, after 10-15 minutes of cooking, add sugar and salt, and then pumpkin. We pour the resulting broth from dried fruits and, before grinding them, send them there, to the container. Nuts are added at the very end, after which the container is covered with a blanket and reaches a few more hours.
So, now we have for breakfast - delicious rice porridge with pumpkin, which we learned to cook!