How to Master Risotto

everybody Thomas Joseph here now risotto is a traditional Italian rice dish that calls for hot stock to be stirred into rice until it forms a creamy delicious dish sounds simple right well with a little bit of practice and a little bit of patience as well you can master risotto but often times I would say that most people end up with risotto that looks like this it's dummy its overcooked and it's kind of flavorless so I'm going to show you today the best technique in making risotto and you will probably be doing it every single week I promise you it's really simple to start what we're going to do is we're going to make a broth to stir into our risotto and how you go about doing that is a little bit of chicken stock this is my preferred method so I have about 4 cups of chicken stock or chicken broth here and to that add 3 cups of water now you might be asking me why are you watering down the flavor of your stock here and it's because you're going to incorporate this into the rice and cook it down cook it with the rice and what that does is it concentrates the flavor so if you start with all stock it's going to be 2 chickeny or 2 flavorful so this light chicken stock that we're making here is really the perfect way to go about making this so I have 1/2 an onion here that goes in as well 1 clove of garlic that is crushed 1 carrot and one stalk of celery and a little bit of parsley now you could throw maybe a sprig of thyme in here too just a way to kind of reflux and now this goes up to medium-high heat and I'm going to bring it to a simmer and then I'm going to let it simmer for about 15 minutes so the stock has been simmering for about 15 minutes and now I have it on the lowest heat setting you want to make sure that you keep the stock warm so that when you add it to your rice it doesn't cool your rice down too much now to get started with the rice here I have a wide shallow pot and to that I'm going to add 3 tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil and the other half of that onion saute the onion until it's nice and translucent and this takes about two minutes you don't want to get any color here on the onions because a risotto should be nice and white so while my onion is sauteing here I thought I would tell you a little bit about the rice we're using now traditionally use arborio rice for a risotto and arborio rice is a short grain rice and you can see it's short and fat in comparison to a long grain rice which is typically what we use here in the United States but also basmati rice and jasmine rice they're considered long grain rice as they're thinner and much longer here so you want to make sure that you're using a short grain rice like arborio which has a high starch content it will give you that creamy texture that we're looking for in our risotto our onion looks nice and translucent here and I'm going to add the rice now this is one cup of arborio rice and you want to saute the rice until it starts clicking and that means that the rice is toasted and that it has absorbed some of that wonderful oil you don't want to color the rice you don't want it to brown at all so the rice is clicking I can hear it and this is what you're looking for you're looking for the rice kernels themselves to be slightly translucent as is the onion and now I'm going to add 1/3 of a cup of dry white wine and you want to cook the white wine down you want to cook it and make sure that it's absorbed into the rice before we start ladling in the hot stock the reason why you want to make sure that it's cooked in is you want to cook off any of that harsh alcohol flavor you really only want that delicious wine flavor so this should take about a minute to a minute and a half but once it's absorbed then we'll add the stock so the white wine is absorbed and now I'm going to start ladling in the stock and you should do that about 1/2 cup at a time give it just a little bit more here what you're going to do is you're going to gently stir the rice until the stock has absorbed into the rice it's a gentle stir but it does is a coaxing is the starch out of the rice and into the sauce basically giving you that wonderful creamy texture now if you stir too vigorously what it's going to do is it's going to encourage a lot of the starch to come out and that will give you a very gummy rice so gently stir now almost all of the stock has been absorbed into this so I'm going to add in another ladle so you're going to repeat this process until the rice is nice and translucent you really want it to be nice and creamy and that takes about 20 to 25 minutes now I didn't mention this before but you could use any stock here if you wanted to make a different risotto you could certainly use a fish stock you could use a shellfish stock here you could even use a vegetable stock if you're vegetarian so you want to use a wide shallow pot whenever you're making risotto so the rice isn't stacked up in a narrow pot but it has room and it has more direct contact with the heat so it cooks evenly so it's been just about 20 minutes and the rice has absorbed the stock nicely there's still a little sauce we're gonna call it in the pan but you should be able to draw the spoon through the rice and the rice itself should stay up on a wall this is just about right here and I'm going to give it a little taste because you still want a slight tooth to the rice so you want a little bit of texture in the very center but the exterior should be creamy this is perfect add two tablespoons of butter here and what the butter does is it adds a wonderful richness to the risotto and also it adds a really nice shine to your risotto now you could use an equal amount of heavy cream here as well that would give that richness to so stir that together and now I'm going to add a half a cup of Parmesan cheese now Parmesan cheese adds flavor and also a good amount of salt so this is really flavoring your risotto but you can also add a little pinch of salt in addition to the cheese but be careful don't add too too much give this a very gentle stir together just until everything is nicely incorporated you can see how creamy the rice is it's not soupy though and this is now ready to serve a trick here in serving risotto is to heat the bowl that you are going to serve it in and what that does is it allows the rice to stay at a nice hot temperature and at the right consistency it and your risotto should spread slightly in the bowl and you don't want to serve too too much of this that looks like a great portion there and I like to just serve it with a little bit of fresh herbs I like a little bit of freshly ground pepper over the top and a little bit of really great quality extra virgin olive oil and there you go you have perfect risotto it only takes about 20 minutes to make you shouldn't be fearful of it and your kitchen conundrum that gluey gloppy rice is no longer enjoy you

Channel: Everyday Food

Views: 783,388

Keywords: Recipe, Recipes, Cooking, Cook, Food, Dinner, Easy meal, Dinner tonight, Everyday Food, Home made, Sarah Carey, Martha Stewart, Family meal, easy cooking, how to, food ideas, quick dinners, fast recipes, easy recipes, quick recipes

Id: d6Mlvfh0kAw

Length: 7min 50sec (470 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 02 2016