Quote:
Originally Posted by Sylvanfan
Any tips from the resident Italians for how to make a perfect Rissotto?
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Here's a recipe for Mushroom Risotto along with some hints.
Ingredients:
Vegetable oil
Shallots, finely diced
Garlic, finely diced
Mushrooms, diced (
preferably crimini)
Chanterelles, dried (
soak in water until mushrooms get soft and reserve the liquid.
Give them a quick, coarse chop)
Arborio Rice
Dry white wine, chardonnay
Chicken stock (
home made chicken stock will obviously work better than anything you can buy. That said, if you don't want to take the time to make it use a good quality commercial broth)
Salt & pepper, to taste
Italian parsley, chopped
Truffle oil, optional
Directions:
1. In a medium size sauce pan, heat up your chicken stock or broth and bring it to a simmer. You don't want it to boil but it is very important to use a warm liquid to ladle into your risotto.
2. In another medium size sauce pan, heat your oil over medium low temperature and add the shallots and garlic. Sweat until shallots start to become a bit translucent. Make sure not to burn your garlic as you will end up with a horribly bitter taste.
You can use butter instead of oil but be careful, butter has a low burning point and will turn from having a nice nutty flavor to bitter if you don't watch it. Whichever fat you decide to use, make sure it's enough to coat the rice.
3. Add your mushrooms and give them a quick stir before adding the rice.
Arborio rice is the most commercially available for making risotto but there are other, short grain types such as Vialone Nano & Carnoloni that are just as good. There are a few more types but these will yiled a better end product because of their high starch content which gives risotto that creamy texure.
4. Turn up the heat in between medium and medium high and add about 50ml of white wine. Let the rice absorb the wine before moving to the next step.
Having a high temperature when adding alcohol helps it to evaporate faster. All you want here is for the flavor to be absorbed as quickly as possible.
5. Bring the heat back down and begin adding your stock or broth, as well as that liquid you reserved from reconstituting your chanterelles.
A common misconception when making risotto is that you have to constantly stir the dish as you add your liquid. Wrong. The purpose of stirring this dish is for two reasons. One, you want to release the starch from and two, you want to keep the rice from sticking to the pan. Add a ladle or two of the stock/broth and give it a gentle stir, let the rice absorb the liquid and keep repeating this step until the rice is al-dente. This can take anywhere between17 to 24 minutes so please be patient.
6. When the rice is cooked, season with the salt & pepper, add your truffle oil (if you don't have it don't worry) and finish with the italian parsely.
Hope this helps, and for some more recipes check out my blog.