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Rice Waffles
1 3/4 cups flour 2/3 cup cold cooked rice 1 1/2 cups milk 2 tablespoons sugar 4 teaspoons baking powder 1/4 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon melted butter 1 egg Mix and sift dry ingredients; work in rice with tips of fingers; add milk, yolk of egg well beaten, butter, and white of egg beaten stiff. Cook same as Waffles.
A straightforward leavened waffle batter stretched with leftover rice, which gives a chewier interior and a crisper shell. The method is standard except for one step worth taking seriously.
- Work the rice in firstRubbing the cold rice into the dry flour with your fingertips coats each grain and breaks up clumps. The recipe is explicit about this order; stirring rice into an already liquid batter is likelier to leave it clumped and settled at the bottom.
- The rice must be coldCold cooked rice is firm and separate; warm rice is sticky and will paste together in the flour. Long-grain or medium-grain both work. Two-thirds of a cup is roughly what a scant quarter cup of raw rice yields.
- Baking powder quantityFour teaspoons to 1 3/4 cups flour is high by modern standards, roughly double the usual rate. With today's double-acting powder, 2 to 2 1/2 teaspoons gives plenty of lift and less risk of a metallic aftertaste.
- Folding the whiteBeat the white stiff and fold it in last, with as few strokes as will incorporate it. Along with the generous baking powder, it is what lifts the batter against the weight of the rice.
- "Cook same as Waffles"Follow the book's plain waffle directions, which call for a hot, well-greased iron. On an electric iron, a medium-high setting and roughly 4 to 5 minutes per waffle is a reasonable starting point; go by the steam slackening rather than the clock.
- Batter consistencyIt should pour thickly but still flow. If the rice has absorbed liquid while standing, thin with a tablespoon or two of milk rather than letting it sit thick.
- YieldAbout six to eight waffles from a standard round or square iron, enough for three or four people. The batter does not hold well; bake it as soon as the white is folded in.
Rice waffles belong to a large family of American breakfast breads built on cooked leftovers — rice, hominy, oatmeal, mashed potato, stale bread. In a household that cooked rice by the potful and had no refrigeration to speak of, a batter that absorbed yesterday's remainder was simple thrift. Rice breads and waffles were especially associated with the rice-growing Carolina and Georgia lowcountry, where rice appeared at breakfast as a matter of course, but by the time this book was printed they had spread into general cookery-school and household-manual repertoire.