Norwegian & Icelandic · Dessert
Rømmegrøt
- Intermediate
- 30 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, warm spice humming through the middle, melting away silken.
Ingredients
- 1 litre cultured sour cream, at least 35 percent fat
- 150 g plain flour
- 700 ml whole milk, warmed
- 6 g fine salt
- 60 g caster sugar mixed with 5 g ground cinnamon, to serve
The skills inside
The bare simmer: holding liquid below the boil
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Bring the sour cream to a bare simmer in a heavy pan and hold it there, stirring, for 10 minutes, until it loosens and the surface begins to gleam. 10 min
- Sift in half the flour and beat hard, keeping the pan at a simmer, until clear yellow fat rises and pools; spoon it into a warm jug as it appears and keep going until no more comes, which should give you 150 to 250 ml.
- Beat in the rest of the flour, cook it 3 minutes, then let the porridge down with warm milk a ladle at a time until it just falls from the spoon; salt it. 3 min
- Cook 5 minutes more, until the raw flour taste has gone and the gloss comes back. 5 min
- Serve in warm bowls with a well of the reserved butter in each and cinnamon sugar scattered over.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
The bare simmer: holding liquid below the boil 183 recipes
- The surface is read rather than assumed: bubbles break slowly in one or two places, or the surface merely shivers, and it does not reach a rolling boil at any point.
- It was held there: the pot was watched and the heat adjusted rather than set once and left, and there is no tide mark up the pot wall from a boil-over.
- The liquid stayed as clear as it should be: no clouding from agitation, and no fat churned into an emulsion through it.
- Whatever is in the liquid is still intact: nothing shredded, broken up, or worried apart by movement.
- The level is roughly where the elapsed time should have left it; a large drop is the evidence that it ran hotter than this while nobody was looking.
Where it goes wrong It was brought to a boil and then left on the same heat, so it churned for the whole cook: the liquid clouded, the fat emulsified into it, and the solids broke apart into the broth.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Sauternes
- Also Right
- Demi-sec Champagne
- From the Taps
- Belgian tripel
- Zero-Proof
- Jasmine tea
The sweetness rule is absolute: the pour must be sweeter than the plate, and acid keeps it from cloying.
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