I occasionally want to use rice milk in cooking, but I really dislike all the commercial rice milks that I’ve tried. I find them thin and flavorless. But in trying to use up  some leftover rice, I discovered that by adjusting the amount of water (and using really good rice, I could make a thick, almost cream-like rice milk that worked pretty well in baking. I still don’t really like rice milk for drinking — there’s something sort of “dry” about the flavor. That’s odd, I know, but that’s the best description I can come up with.

Anyway, any time I’m making rice and think I’ll have time for rice milk later in the week, I make a cup or two extra. It doesn’t take that much longer in the rice cooker. I’ll take the leftover rice and let it soak in mason jars overnight, and then blend it up the next day. If you strain it, it’s nice and smooth (depending on what you want to use it for, consider not straining it. It seems to add some bulk to bread and cake unstrained, but none of those recipes are blog-ready, I’m still playing.) But I hate throwing out the pulp and wondered if I could season it and make crackers out of it.

It worked! But they really have more of a chip texture than a cracker, so I’m calling these chips. I did these in the dehydrator, but if you don’t have one, I’m guessing that doing this on low in the oven would work. The times I’ve given will be wrong, though. I didn’t try this because I’ve not made them yet this summer when it was cool enough to want to use the oven. You can also use whatever seasoning you like, but I don’t really recommend a salt-free one. Those turned out really bland. I tried a bunch of the seasonings in my kitchen, and I’ve listed what I liked best.

On rice: I use a brown jasmine rice I buy in large bags at the Asian market in Nashua. Brown jasmine is my “all-purpose” rice at this point in time. It’s likely that the brown rice adds to the leftover pulp, so I would suggest using brown rice for this. But if you try it with a white rice — or something else, please let us know in the comments. You do get rice cream (which is easily thinned down to rice milk) and crackers out of this, so it’s a 2-for-1 recipe.

I did not give an exact number of chips, as it’s come out a little different each time for me, despite all attempts to create stringent measurements. Since this is basically a way to use up something you’d throw out otherwise, maybe a little uncertainty is okay?

Brown Rice Pulp Chips

• ~ 3-4 cups cooked brown jasmine rice
• water (see directions)
• seasoning of your choice (I liked Penzey’s Sandwich Sprinkle best)

Fill a quart mason jar with the rice, lightly packing it in. Fill the jar with water. Put it in the fridge overnight. I’m not 100% sure it needs to be refrigerated, but better safe than sorry. The rice will soak up a lot of this water, and I think it makes a smoother milk.

Empty the water and about half the rice from the jar into your blender. Add a cup of water and blend. If you need more water, add it, but your goal is to blend the smoothest rice milk with the least amount of water here. You will need more, but add it gradually

Repeat with the other half of the rice, but add about 1 1/2 cups of water to begin, as you don’t have leftover soaking water.

Now strain the rice milk through a fine sieve. Keep stirring the mush to drain as much milk as possible out of the rice pulp.

I usually get about a quart of rice cream out of this.

With the leftover pulp, drop in about 1 Tablespoon blobs onto the fruit roll trays of your dehydrator (or onto a cookie sheet if you’re trying the oven). Sprinkle generously with seasoning.

Run the dehydrator at 155ºF for 9 hours, and check to see if your chips are crispy. They may need a little more time when it’s humid out. Lock these up in an airtight container to keep.