The end of the year can be a busy time for some, as people juggle work, socialising at Christmas do's and everyday life. Ways to make your days smoother include streamlining cooking and finding fuss-free recipes that are easy to rustle up.
My air fryer has revolutionised my life by allowing me to cook delicious food with ease. Despite one of my favourite winter dishes being rice pudding, I have never cooked this in an air fryer before.
I was excited to experiment one weekend and use one of my favourite drinks, the rum Old Fashioned cocktail, as a base for a comforting winter recipe. I was keen to see if I could shorten the cooking length of a traditional rice pudding - Nigella's rice pudding takes two hours and involves a lot of simmering and stirring - to something a little faster.
Although the cooking time to pressure cook rice in my Ninja Foodi is 5 minutes, extra time is needed for the appliance to build pressure and for it to be released. I found the appliance took around 10 minutes to build pressure plus another 10 minutes for a natural steam release, taking the total cooking time to approximately 25 minutes, which is still considerably faster than Nigella's 2-hour recipe.
You can top the cooked pudding with whatever you fancy. Popular topping options on a poll I ran on social media include chocolate buttons, stewed apple, fresh fruit such as bananas and raspberries, honey and jam.
I had already steeped dried fruit in spiced rum, for a Christmas cake I am baking, so I tumbled some plump fruit on top of my pudding. Here is my air fryer rice pudding recipe which was one of the easiest things I have cooked in the air fryer, because you literally just sling everything in to one pot and let the air fryer do all the heavy lifting.
Recipe for air fryer Old Fashioned spiced rum rice pudding
Ingredients
- 300g uncooked white rice
- 8 green cardamom pods (lightly bashed)
- Pinch freshly grated nutmeg
- 2 pints full fat milk
- 75g ground almond
- 80g demerara sugar
- Good glug spiced rum
- Few drops of orange bitters
- Grated zest of orange and topping of your choice
Method
1. Rinse rice until water runs clear. This will wash away excess starch and will yield beautifully loose grains of rice.
2. Place all ingredients in the air fryer, give a good stir and cook for 5 minutes using the pressure cooker function. After around 20 minutes the rice pudding will be cooked.
3. Serve hot and drizzle with honey, dollop of jam or favourite topping.
4. This will keep in the fridge for around 4 days. It also freezes for up 3 months and is a great pick-me-up to satisfy a sweet craving or a mid-afternoon slump.
