Mushroom Risotto

Name: Mushroom Risotto
Cook time: 45 min
Total time: 45 min
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients: 300 g arborio or carnaroli rice; 20 g dried porcini mushrooms; 400 g chestnut mushrooms; 1.2 litres chicken or vegetable stock; 1 onion; 2 cloves garlic; 150 ml dry white wine; 80 g butter; 60 g Parmigiano Reggiano; 2 tbsp olive oil; Small bunch parsley; Salt and black pepper

Dried porcini for the stock, fresh mushrooms browned hard and folded in at the end, and the butter beaten in off the heat.

🕐 45 min👥 4 servings🍽️ Main Course 🍝 Italian

Nutrition Info (per serving)

590
Calories: 16g
Protein: 26g
Fat: 68g
Carbs

Vitamin DRiboflavinNiacinVitamin B6SeleniumCopperPhosphorusPotassium

Ingredients

300 g arborio or carnaroli rice
20 g dried porcini mushrooms
400 g chestnut mushrooms
1.2 litres chicken or vegetable stock
1 onion
2 cloves garlic
150 ml dry white wine
80 g butter
60 g Parmigiano Reggiano
2 tbsp olive oil
Small bunch parsley
Salt and black pepper

Instructions

1Put the dried porcini in a bowl and pour over 300 ml of the stock, hot. Leave to soak for 20 minutes, then lift the mushrooms out, chop them and strain the soaking liquid back into the rest of the stock through a fine sieve. That liquid is the deepest flavour in the dish.
2Keep the stock at a bare simmer in a pan on a back burner. Cold stock added to hot rice stalls the cooking each time.
3Finely dice the onion and mince the garlic. Slice the chestnut mushrooms thickly. Chop the parsley.
4Heat the olive oil in a wide frying pan over high heat and cook the fresh mushrooms in two batches, undisturbed for the first 2 minutes, until deep brown. Season and set aside. Cooking them separately and hard is what keeps them meaty rather than grey and watery.
5In a wide heavy pan, melt 30 g of the butter over medium-low and cook the onion with a pinch of salt for 8 minutes, until soft and translucent but not coloured.
6Add the garlic and the chopped porcini and cook for 1 minute.
7Add the rice and stir for 2 minutes, until every grain is coated in fat and the edges look translucent while the centre stays chalky white.
8Pour in the wine and stir until it has almost entirely evaporated.
9Add the hot stock one ladle at a time, stirring often and waiting until each addition is nearly absorbed before adding the next. This takes 18 to 20 minutes; the stirring rubs starch off the grains, and that starch is the sauce.
10Start tasting at 16 minutes. It is ready when the grains are tender with the faintest resistance at the centre and the whole thing moves like a slow wave when you tilt the pan.
11Take the pan off the heat. Add the remaining 50 g butter, cut into cubes, and the grated Parmigiano, and beat hard with a wooden spoon for 30 seconds. This is the mantecatura, and it is what makes risotto creamy without any cream.
12Fold in the browned mushrooms and parsley, season, cover and rest for 2 minutes before serving.

Risotto has an undeserved reputation for being difficult. It is not difficult, it is just attentive — twenty minutes where you cannot walk away. Get four things right and it works every time.

The rice has to be the right rice

Arborio, carnaroli and vialone nano are high in amylopectin, the starch that dissolves into the cooking liquid and thickens it. Carnaroli holds its shape best and is what most Italian cooks prefer; arborio is more widely sold and perfectly good.

Long-grain rice cannot do this. Neither can basmati, and rinsing any risotto rice washes off the exact thing you need.

Toast the grains first

Two minutes of stirring the dry rice in fat before any liquid goes in is called the tostatura. It coats each grain in fat, which slows how fast the outside breaks down, so the centre has time to cook before the exterior turns to mush.

You are looking for translucent edges around a white core. It also gives a faint nuttiness that survives the whole cook.

Hot stock, one ladle at a time

Adding cold stock drops the pan temperature and the rice stops releasing starch until it recovers. Keeping the stock simmering alongside is a small piece of setup that makes the whole thing more predictable.

Adding it gradually is not superstition. Each addition concentrates the starch already released, and the constant friction of stirring in a shallow layer of liquid is what abrades the grains. Dump it all in at once and you have boiled rice.

Brown the mushrooms separately

Mushrooms are mostly water. Added raw to the risotto they release that water into the pan, dilute everything and end up pale and squeaky.

Cooked alone in a hot pan, left undisturbed until the water has driven off and the surface browns, they become concentrated and meaty. Fold them in at the end and they keep that texture.

The dried porcini are doing a different job — they are for the stock, not for texture. Twenty grams gives an intensity that a kilo of fresh chestnut mushrooms could not.

Mantecatura

Cold butter and cheese beaten into the risotto off the heat is the final step and the one people skip. The fat emulsifies into the starchy liquid and turns it glossy and rich. On the heat, the butter would simply melt and separate.

Beat it properly — thirty seconds of real effort — and let it rest for two minutes before serving. It should spread slowly on the plate rather than sitting in a mound.

Nutrition

Around 590 calories a serving. Mushrooms are one of the few plant foods with meaningful vitamin D, and they bring selenium and copper. Using vegetable stock and leaving out the Parmigiano makes it vegetarian and vegan respectively, though the mantecatura suffers without cheese — a spoonful of nutritional yeast helps.

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