No Half Measures

11 Apr 2022

I’ve had horchata at lots of restaurants, and in retrospect I’m surprised that I’ve never tried to make it myself. It’s delicious - creamy, sweet, with a complex flavor. It goes well with spicy food and helps cool your mouth as a bonus. You’ll find it served at most legit Mexican restaurants, usually in big cups. After surveying some of the recipes out there, it didn’t seem too difficult to make - but there do appear to be two different camps.

One soaks the rice in water overnight, and then discards the rice and uses the water as the base for the horchata, like in this recipe. The other camp soaks the rice overnight and then discards the water, blending the softened rice with milk to extract the rice flavor as the base of the horchata, as in this recipe. I tried each recipe separately, and then wondered - why throw away the water, when the blended-rice version calls for water to be added at the end? I figured I could just use the soaking water and reap the benefits of both worlds!

Here’s my horchata recipe, made from combining these two recipes into one to use both the soaking water and blending the rice with milk.

First, soak the rice, almonds and cinnamon overnight. I’m fairly certain you don’t actually need the almonds, but I happen to have slivered almonds in my baking cabinet, so in they went!

The next morning, strain the water from the rice and set aside. Blend the rice mixture with just enough of the evaporated milk to get it to blend. If you add too much milk, it will be harder for the blender to break up the rice. Strain that mixture, which might take a while since it will be very thick.

I’m always trying to add as little sugar as possible, so I went with 2/3 cup of sugar and also 1 Tbsp of powdered cinnamon. If you have an immersion blender, using it to blend the sugar, milk, the rest of the evaporated milk, vanilla, cinnamon, and the result of straining the rice mixture is convenient, but a whisk will suffice.

I make mine in half-gallon glass jars, and the remaining volume is approximately 1 liter, which is what one of the recipes called for in water, so I simply fill the rest of the way with the water from soaking the rice.

There we are! You’ll notice a decent amount of sediment; you can either shake or blend it in, or just drink the liquid without incorporating it. I tend to prefer it, and it distributes itself fairly well if you serve it with ice.