Tejberizs means rice into milk. It is not a rice pudding, not a dessert and is certainly not a breakfast food in Hungary. It can be a meal for children, a snack or a light family meal for the evening hours. Tejberizs is most often eaten hot and sprinkled with either cinnamon sugar or cocoa sugar. It can also be eaten chilled with a sweetened fruit topping or with jam. Because the toppings are sweet you really don’t need to add sugar to the pot.
Tejberizs was always a welcome dish in my family and we kids preferred to eat it with sugar cocoa. In the fifties and sixties you could only buy one kind of rice in Hungary and it tended to be quite grainy. The lack of quality rice, hovewer, was advantages for tejberizs making. But here in Canada I use Arborio rice, because basmati, converted rice, even some Chinese rice do not work all that well for tejberizs. The trick is to keep the milk from scorching.
MILK RICE
Tejberizs was always a welcome dish in my family and we kids preferred to eat it with sugar cocoa. In the fifties and sixties you could only buy one kind of rice in Hungary and it tended to be quite grainy. The lack of quality rice, hovewer, was advantages for tejberizs making. But here in Canada I use Arborio rice, because basmati, converted rice, even some Chinese rice do not work all that well for tejberizs. The trick is to keep the milk from scorching.
MILK RICE
5 cups 1% milk*
1 cup Arborio rice
1 tsp butter
topping of choice
• Bring the milk to a boil in the microwave.
• Add the butter to a medium sized pot.
• Pour in the boiling milk into the pot and add the rice.
• Bring it to boil, but be careful not to let the milk boil over.
• Soon as the milk starts to rise remove pot from the heat.
• Reduce the heat to low-medium.
• The pot should slowly simmer without the milk boiling over.
• You may have to adjust the heat several times.
• Stir the rice very often to prevent scorching.
• Cook until rice is tender.
• Sprinkle with a topping or with sweetened fruit
* Skim milk can also be used if you increase the butter to 2 tsp.
