Champorado (Filipino Chocolate Rice Pudding)

Champorado is a Filipino chocolate rice pudding (or porridge) that is a popular breakfast treat. It’s easy to make, rich, and comforting.

Where does champorado come from?

Filipino cuisine, like the culture in general, has a number of influences from its history as a Spanish colony which started in the 1500s. In fact, the name Philippines is after the former Spanish king Felipe.

The colonists brought a number of ingredients with them, many from the Americas, including tomatoes, chili peppers, and corn. They also brought techniques like sauteing with garlic.

Some classic dishes in Filipino cuisine are heavily influenced by, if not directly the same as, Spanish and Latin American dishes. These include paella, empanadas, and flan.

And some Latin American dishes are a result of traders from the region staying in the Philippines.

As with many cuisines influenced by colonization, other dishes draw on overseas influences that then adapt to local ingredients.

Food historians believe champorado to be one such example.

Champorado is generally believed to be an adaptation of the Mexican champurrado. Champurrado is a thick, chocolate-based atole drink made with masa harina. Since masa harina is not a local ingredient in the Philippines, they adapted the dish to use rice, a common crop and ingredient on the islands.

(If you’re curious, find out more about the history and food of the Philipines.)

What type of chocolate should you use for champorado?

Traditionally, you make this dish with tablea which is a typical chocolate product in the Philippines.

Tablea means “tablet” and these disks are unrefined chocolate made with pure roasted and ground cocoa beans. They come in a few forms but typically are unsweetened.

The best-known use for these is Filipino hot chocolate but also for this dish. If you can’t find them, you can use unsweetened cocoa powder, as I have here.

In both cases, you dissolve the tablea or cocoa powder in some hot water, then add it as you cook the rice.

What type of rice do I use in champorado?

This dish uses sticky rice to give it a distinct texture. Sticky rice comes in short and long grain versions, as well as both white and purple. It is sometimes known as glutinous or sweet rice. (It doesn’t contain gluten, but the name refers to the slightly sticky, glue-like texture of the cooked rice.)

These rice varieties are high in amylopectin starch and low in amylose starch and are more opaque than regular rice.

Typically, the long grain version is more common in China, and the short grain is common in Thailand. The short grain is also typical in sweeter dishes while the longer grain finds uses in savory applications.

You’ll find purple sticky rice used in Northern Thailand and Laos as a savory side dish. And they use the short grain white sticky rice for sticky rice with mango, a popular dessert.

The short grain version is also used to make glutinous rice flour which is used to make things like Japanese mochi and Chinese sweet dumplings, tangyuan.

You can use either short or long grain sticky rice here, but short is probably more typical as well as easier to find.

How to serve champorado

You can enjoy this breakfast dish just as it is, but you can also add a little sweetened condensed milk or evaporated milk on top for extra creaminess.

Traditionally, you might have this with tuyo, a kind of dried fish.  It might sound unusual but the contrasting savory and salty flavors work well.

Despite what you might think, this chocolate porridge is not that sweet as there is a high amount of unsweetened chocolate relative to the sugar used to sweeten it. But the dish is very comforting, rich, and filling.

It is a perfect breakfast to sustain you through until the next meal. So be sure to give champorado a try soon.