It has been hella cold up here lately and with 
A quick rummage through the cupboard and I found the two most important ingredients to make myself a bowl of happiness.
Champorado is an old filipino classic and something that never fails to bring fond memories of being a child in the Philippines.
The closest thing to it in Australia is creamy rice pudding but instead of cooking it in milk with vanilla extract and raisins, we just add cocoa powder or chocolate or both and loads and loads of it.
Traditionally, the rice used for Champorado is glutinous rice because of it's gooey, thick consistency when cooked. But since I'm up in the mountains and glutinous rice is hard to source, and because aussies went nuts hoarding rice for covid-19 and all we could get was this packet of medium grain rice suitable for paella, I was, by some miracle, all set up to make champorado.
Serves 6 (or 4 🤤🤤)
Ingredients:
2 cups of medium grain or glutinous rice
3 cups of water (+ 1-2 cups of water)
4 heaped tablespoons of cocoa powder
(Plus blocks of chocolate if you have it)
Add Ons:
Sugar or Condensed Milk (for sweetness)
Milk or Evaporated Milk (I used Coconut Milk)
Dried fish (it's a filo thing)
Block of chocolate
Method:
This is what makes champorado special.
If you just cooked the rice and cocoa powder what you're going to be left with is just that, Cocoa rice without any sweetness.
Sure your house is going to smell amazing but your palette is going to need more so in comes the extras.
In the Philippines we would add condensed milk for the sweetener and dried fish to balance the sweetness and add saltiness to enhance the cocoa flavour.
Think salt to salted caramel.
Milk is added in various forms and combinations.
Evaporated milk + Sugar.
Evaporated milk + Condensed Milk.
Milk + Condensed Milk.
Milk + Sugar.
This is all to add luxe and sweetness to the dish. Extra luxe if you chuck in blocks of milk chocolate.
Lucky for me I had a tin of condensed milk in the cupboard as well as long life coconut milk so I used those.
Champorado is a pretty forgiving dish and as long as you have rice, chocolate, milk and sugar this is totally doable.
Refrigerate for a few days, up to a week, week and a half ~ if it lasts that long. Heat it in the microwave (or the stove),with or without the milk ~ I do it with the milk. But it's also ok to add cold milk to the warm rice ~ you get that hot/cold sensation.
Why don't you give it a go? It's super flexible and so delish it could easily be the next favourite dish in your household.
