24 Rich Risotto Recipes (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret ingredient in risotto? ›

Use Salted Water Instead of Broth in Risotto

It's an ingenious tip on many levels.

Always use warm stock.

Warming the broth before adding it to the warm rice coaxes more starch out of each grain of rice and helps prevent it from overcooking. Cool broth takes longer to warm up in the risotto pan and may shock the grain into holding onto its starches while the rice itself continues to cook.

One of the most famous risotto dishes is no doubt risotto alla Milanese. The first recipe mentioning the dish appears in cookbooks starting in the 1800s.

The technique of risotto is to slowly and gradually cook a starchy ingredient by adding liquid in small amounts and stirring. This technique's main purpose is to draw starch out of the main ingredient to give the dish a creamy texture.

If you are able to get white wine vinegar then you can add a tablespoon of this to the rice and let it boil away before adding any stock and this will often give some of the flavour of wine, whilst reducing the alcohol content.

According to Salvatore, it all depends on the ingredients. The chef prefers oil over butter (and oil works particularly well with seafood risottos), but butter is better for vegetable-based dishes like Rampoldi's black truffle with mushroom or mixed vegetable and ginger risotto.

The key, instead, is to undercook the risotto and cool it rapidly to prevent that rice from overcooking, so you can easily finish cooking it later.

Sure, whipped cream won't save a gluey or gummy risotto (hey, there's always arancini), but it will make good risotto recipes even better. In the corn risotto recipe, that means whipping ½ cup of heavy cream to stiff peaks and then gently folding it into the pot.

Risotto in Italy is often a first course (primo), served before a second course (secondo), but risotto alla milanese is often served with ossobuco alla milanese as a one-course meal.

Should you stir risotto as it cooks? ›

When cooking risotto on a stovetop, you're required to periodically stir it to ensure it doesn't stick to the bottom of the pot. Some people, however, stir it too frequently. This adds air into the risotto, cooling it down and making it gluey.

Often called the "king of Italian rice," carnaroli from Riso Buono is the risotto variety of choice for cooks in the know. With a higher starch content and firmer texture than the arborio you may see at the grocery store, this rice makes an ultra-creamy, restaurant-quality risotto that's almost impossible to overcook.

In Italy, when it is not used as a complete meal, risotto is considered a main dish, and is usually served with small portions of meat or light vegetable side dishes. For example, it is very common to pair risotto with a couple of lemon escalopes, or with bresaola and arugula.

Due to the high quality of the materials used, the labor-intensive cooking procedure, and the overall dining experience it provides, risotto can be more expensive. The price is influenced by premium components like Arborio rice and specialty cheeses.

Sautéed shallots, garlic, shiitake mushrooms, and thyme are used to build a robust and flavorful foundation on which arborio rice and hot stock are melded. With each stir of the spoon, the starches thicken, and the earthy essence of the mushrooms builds depth of flavor.

In addition to rice as the main ingredient, classic risotto also contains a small amount of onion or shallot sautéed in butter, dry white wine, hot stock, vegetables or mushrooms, and different aromatics.

Yes, the foundational creaminess of well-made risotto should come from the starches that the grains release slowly over the cooking process—but a bit of actual cream doesn't hurt, either. Make sure to season the risotto with salt after you've added the whipped cream.

Risotto is a rice dish but differs substantially from other rice dishes, mainly because of its semi-fluid and creamy consistency. A rice dish can be called risotto only if the cooked mixture, when served on a flat plate, can flow like sequential wave currents.