recipe
Arroz doce: creamy Brazilian rice pudding
Brazilian rice pudding with regular long-grain rice, sweetened condensed milk and cinnamon. Cook the rice until tender first, then simmer it into a soft, creamy dessert.
AI editorial review: 2026-10-22
Researched recipe; not cooked or tested by Culinara.
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Ingredients and method
Approximately 6 dessert portions; serve warm or chill promptly for later
Ingredients
- 1 US cup uncooked regular long-grain white rice, not instant, parboiled, converted or brown rice; leave unrinsed for this method
- 2 US cups water (about 475 mL), plus a few tablespoons only if needed to finish softening the rice
- 2 1/2 US cups whole milk (about 590 mL)
- 1 can (14 ounces / 397 g) full-fat sweetened condensed milk; a Brazilian 395 g can also fits this batch
- 2 cinnamon sticks
- 5 whole cloves, counted so all can be removed
- A small pinch of fine salt
- 1/4 US cup heavy whipping cream (about 60 mL)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- Ground cinnamon, for a light dusting if desired
Method
- Put the unrinsed rice and 2 cups water in a heavy-bottomed saucepan of at least 3-quart capacity. Bring to a boil, turn the heat low, cover and cook until the water is mostly absorbed and the rice is tender all the way through. Begin checking after 10 minutes; depending on the rice and heat, this stage can take closer to 15–20 minutes. If the pot is dry while the grains still have a hard center, add a few tablespoons of water, cover and cook a little longer.
- Stir in the whole milk, sweetened condensed milk, cinnamon sticks, all 5 cloves and the salt. Bring just to a gentle simmer, then adjust the heat to maintain small, lazy bubbles. Cook uncovered, stirring often and scraping the bottom and corners with a flexible spatula so the sweet milk does not scorch. Stir more frequently as it thickens.
- After roughly 15–20 minutes of gentle simmering, look for tender grains suspended in a creamy, flowing sauce. It should fall softly from a spoon and settle, with some loose milk still visible; it will thicken as it stands. If it is already stiff, stir in a small splash of milk rather than reducing it further.
- Stir in the cream and simmer gently for about 1 minute. Take off the heat and stir in the vanilla extract. Remove both cinnamon sticks and all 5 cloves before serving. Do not leave whole cloves hidden in individual portions.
- Spoon into bowls and add a light dusting of ground cinnamon if desired. Serve warm right away. To serve cold or save leftovers, divide promptly into small, shallow containers and refrigerate at 40°F or below, ideally within 1 hour of cooking. Do not leave the whole saucepan on the counter to cool slowly.
- Eat refrigerated rice pudding within 24 hours. Serve cold, or reheat only the portion needed once, adding a little milk if it is too thick and stirring until it reaches 165°F throughout. Discard pudding left unrefrigerated for more than 2 hours, or 1 hour above 90°F; reheating does not make poorly stored rice safe.
AI-generated illustration: Serving interpretation of arroz doce with the optional ground-cinnamon dusting. Whole infused spices are removed. Grain size and creaminess may vary.
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Image details
Original text-to-image output resized proportionally to 960×640 and JPEG-compressed; no crop or added ingredients.
Which rice and which milk?
Use plain long-grain white rice for this version. Keeping its surface starch helps the milk thicken around the grains. Quick-cooking, converted and brown rice have different cooking behavior, so their package timings do not fit these instructions.
Read the can carefully: sweetened condensed milk supplies both concentrated dairy and sugar. Evaporated milk is unsweetened and is not an interchangeable substitute. Whole milk provides the simmering liquid; a little heavy cream is added at the end.
Brazilian arroz-doce has several coherent versions. Panelinha also uses rice, milk, condensed milk, cinnamon and cloves, but combines them differently and adds orange peel. This page follows the separate water-cooking stage and full-can condensed-milk formula described by Aline Shaw, without adding citrus or raisins.
Tender grains first, creamy milk second
Check a grain before adding the dairy: it should be soft through its center. If the grain is still firm and the water has disappeared, finish that stage with a little more water. The later simmer is for blending and thickening the pudding, not for guessing whether the rice cooked in the first place.
Use the lowest heat that maintains a gentle simmer once the milk goes in. Frequent scraping is especially important near the end, when the mixture gets thicker. If the bottom scorches, do not scrape that browned layer into the pudding.
Stop while the pudding is a little looser than the texture you want to eat. Warm arroz-doce is softer; a refrigerated portion becomes thicker. A small splash of milk can loosen a safely stored portion. Allow roughly 30–40 minutes for the two cooking stages, depending on the rice and stove; this is a planning estimate, not a Culinara test result.
A simple cinnamon finish
Whole cinnamon and cloves flavor the milk while it simmers, then come out. Count the cloves as they go in and again as they come out. Vanilla extract supplies flavor without the visible seeds of a vanilla bean. Ground cinnamon is the optional finishing garnish; no extra sugar is needed in this selected formula.
Sources: [1]
Cool rice pudding quickly
Contains milk. Treat this as a perishable cooked-rice dish even though it tastes sweet. Rice can contain bacterial spores that survive cooking; slow cooling or warm storage can allow unsafe growth, and reheating is not a fix for that.
For this recipe, use the UK Food Standards Agency’s conservative rice-specific plan: cool in small portions, refrigerate ideally within 1 hour and eat within 24 hours. Keep the refrigerator at 40°F or below. If reheating, do it only once and heat the whole portion to the US leftover target of 165°F; cold portions also require proper cooling and storage.
Research sources
- Aline Shaw — Arroz Doce Cremoso, Brazilian Kitchen Abroad (checked 2026-10-22)
- Panelinha — Arroz-doce tradicional (checked 2026-10-22)
- Food Standards Agency — Home food fact checker (rice safety) (checked 2026-10-22)
- FDA — Are You Storing Food Safely? (checked 2026-10-22)
- FoodSafety.gov — Safe Minimum Internal Temperatures (checked 2026-10-22)