Why pay $18.00 for a bowl of this when you can make it at home for next to nothing? Risotto is the reason you should always have a bottle of dry white wine or champagne in your fridge. First trick is always use Arborio rice. Don’t try this with long/short grain. It’ll disappoint. Second trick is to chill out. To reach ultimate creaminess the stock needs to be poured in slowly, little bits at a time. So give yourself around 20 minutes to hangout in the kitchen with a glass of wine, stirring your risotto. Third trick is to cook with music on. It will make it taste better.
2 cups arborio rice
1 diced brown onion
1 tablespoon rice bran/olive oil
1 clove crushed garlic
splash of white wine*
3 -4 cups of boiling water
3 teaspoons of Massel chicken-style stock (or follow directions on tin)
extra water
cracked salt & pepper
optional extras**
Put a saucepan on medium heat. While that’s heating up make up your stock in a pouring jug/cup with the boiling water & Massel powder. Then sit it on the bench, ready to pour next to the pan.
Heat the oil. Add onion & garlic. Cook ’til translucent. Add rice. Stir with wooden spoon until rice is coated with oily, delicious, garlicy oniony…ness. Stir for a few minutes – rice should brown ever so slightly. Deglaze (fancy word for ‘pour so all the oily shit comes off the bottom of the pan’) the pan with the wine. Stir until wine is absorbed. Pour some stock in. Stir until dissolved. Repeat this a million times.
Keep stirring, stirring, stirring (This is why you’ve put music on).
If, after a million times, the rice is not cooked through keep adding hot water in increments until it is. Crack a restrained amount of salt & heaps of pepper over the risotto***. Serve in a huge white bowl with herbs ripped all over it, or as a side dish to…er…anything.
Once you have begun your relationship with risotto you will realise what a faithful dish it can be. It’s there for you when Centrelink isn’t. It’s there for you when you’ve forgotten to go to the shops & now they’re closed & holy crap all you’ve got left is the arse end of a tomato paste jar, frozen peas, half a carrot, arborio rice & a tin of stock powder rattling around somewhere. It doesn’t ask for anything more than a half hour of stirring.
*you don’t strictly need the wine. If you’re having a lean week, or accidently drank it all the night before, lemon juice or just stock will do fine.
**This is a basic risotto recipe. Once you have mastered this, go forth & explore the entire risotto genre. Just add anything you like during the stock-absorbing-stirring time. For mexican rice add chopped some jalapeños (& the brine if using a jar), frozen peas, frozen corn, half a packet of Taco seasoning, & some chopped tomatoes/capsicum. Try roasted pumpkin & sage. For tomatoey red goodness add two huge tablespoons of tomato paste, chopped tomatoes & some lemon juice (whatever risotto I’m cooking I’ll pretty much always finish with a big squirt of lemon juice to stir through add the end). The Dutchman likes mushroom, spring onion & celery risotto. A tablespoon of Tofutti doesn’t go astray, either.
***traditional risotto uses parmesan cheese at the end but you know how I feel about products that involve baby cow stomachs. So, seriously, leave that shit out. Your risotto will taste amazing enough as it is.
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