Double Chocolate Champorado

If you have leftover rice, heat it with milk and add chocolate to make champorado. If, like me, you’re not a fan of tuyo (salted dried fish), garnish with salted nuts and, for added richness, milk chocolate morsels.

Let’s make three things clear first. First, this is not Mexican champurrado but Filipino champorado, a rice and chocolate dish popularly served for breakfast or snack.

Second, this is not the traditional way of cooking champorado. This is a salvage operation to get creative with so much leftover rice I cooked for New Year’s Eve.

Third, the procedure will only work with cooked medium or short-grain rice. Long grain rice which is less starchy will yield a soupy result rather than the thick porridge consistency that traditional champorado has.

My brother and his family came over for New Year’s Eve and, because I know my nephews to be rice eaters, I cooked plenty of rice. But Alex baked two large pizzas and the rice turned out to be excess carbs. There was way too much rice sitting in the fridge for days and I just had to get creative with it. Fried rice is great but how much fried rice could we eat day after day?

So, one way of salvaging the rice was to make champorado. It worked because we use Japanese rice at home. While not as sticky as glutinous rice which is what is traditionally used for cooking champorado, Japanese rice is starchy enough to make a sufficiently thick porridge.

What I did was to heat the rice in milk with a generous pinch of salt. I did this over low heat to give the rice grains a chance to absorb the milk and soften without allowing the milk to curdle.

Next, I added plenty of chopped dark chocolate. While tablea is traditional for cooking champorado, it will not work for a salvage operation like this because it just isn’t rich enough. It was the dark chocolate that thickened the champorado.

I cooked the milk, rice and chocolate slowly, stirring occasionally, until the chocolate was completely melted.

To add more chocolatey flavor to my champorado, I sprinkled it with milk chocolate morsels before serving. And for contrast in texture, salted toasted walnuts.