Hey dudes!
I am Hilah, and today on Hilah Cooking I am gonna to show you a basic risotto recipe.
If you you don't know what it is, risotto or risAHtto, I have no idea how to pronounce
it because I am not Italian, but it is a short grain rice that's cooked up in broth until
it's nice and creamy and then we add some cheese to it, and it's a really comforting,
easy, filling and a really pretty cheap dish to make, and it doesn't really take very long,
so let's get started, synchronized watches.
I've gotta go get some watches guys.
Before you start anything you want to get eight cups of stock up to a simmer like so.
I am using a homemade chicken stock, but you can use vegetable stock or whatever, and we're
just gonna keep that simmering while we work on the rice.
So I've got a little bit of butter here melting.
Don't run out on me now olive oil or you're dead to me.
Okay, we're gonna sauté about a cup of onion.
You could use shallots too, and we're just gonna cook these until they are soft with
a little bit of salt and pepper.
Once your onions look like this, they are not brown, but they are soft and translucent
we can add the rice, and this is an arborea rice.
It's sort of a medium, short-grained rice; really really starch.
The same family of rice that you would use to make paella or something like that, similar
to sushi rice in that it's got a lot of starch in it, and it's kind of short, fat little
grains, and we're just gonna kind of toast this in the butter.
Well, not, no we don't want to get it toasted, but we do want to get the grains sort of covered
in oil and fat and looking shiny and they'll start to turn opaque before they toast, and
that's what we're looking for.
I mean they are already pretty opaque, but you'll see a difference.
Once your rice is looking like this, so it's all white as opposed to like having a little
white center and then being sort of translucent around the edges.
We're gonna add half a cup of white wine, and let that cook off, and if you don't drink
alcohol, sorry buddy, you're up shit creek.
I am just kidding.
You could just use like half a cup of broth instead just to kind of get this started I
guess, but you probably could actually just skip right ahead to the cooking part since
this really for flavor I think.
So we're just gonna cook it off until it's evaporated.
Okay, so once your wine is absorbed and/or evaporated, now is the time for the simmering
stock.
You want to add it about a cup at a time at first and having it hot like this is gonna
make the risotto cook a lot faster, and it helps it get super-duper creamy.
So we add a cup and then we stir and we wait until that is all absorbed, and the stirring
is very important.
The constant stirring helps that starch form.
It helps it release and form a really creamy thing that's almost.
It has the consistency when it's done that like the rice has been cooked in heavy cream,
but surprise, it's actually pretty dietary except for all the butter and the parmesan
[laughs], and it take a lot of patience.
Sorry guys.
This is probably like the worst recipe I myself could try to demo because I lack patience,
but I will do my best.
So we've got it over kind of a medium-low heat which is tortuous for me, but it's happening.
Things are happening.
All right when it's about absorbed like this.
I mean you don't want it to like dry out, but mostly absorbed.
We can add another simmering stock and stir it again.
So you just want to keep adding the stock a cup at a time until you've added six cups,
and it'll take about five minutes or so in between each addition for it to absorb into
the rice, and then once we get to where we've added six cups, we'll watch it a little bit
more carefully.
So I am just going to keep doing that, and I will see you in four cups worth of time,
four more cups I mean because we already did two.
Okay after our six cups of stock has been added and it's looking like this, that's when
you want to give it a taste, and we're looking for tender rice.
Okay, this is great, so it's like al dente basically.
The center is cooked through, but it's still a little bit chewy, so we might not need to
add all eight cups, but now we're gonna start adding it in smaller increments like just
a half a cup at a time, stir that in just until the rice is cooked through, so like
when you taste it, it doesn't like get stuck in your teeth like the last little bite that
I got did a little bit, but not that it's mushy, like the rice grains should still maintain
their integrity and still look like rice grains, and if you wanted to add like sautéed mushrooms
to this and do a mushroom risotto or whatever, sautéed asparagus or anything like that,
you could add that in at this point.
Like, once your risotto is almost finished cooking is when you can add some sautéed
vegetable or something, and you'd also be tasting for salt when you taste it now.
My broth was really well-seasoned, so I don't think I need to add any salt to the risotto,
but if you're using a low sodium stock or something you made yourself without salt in
it, then you might want to add some salt.
Nice, so you can see how thick this liquid is becoming.
God, it's beautiful.
It's like mesmerizing.
This is cooler than a lava lamp.
I am gonna stick my same gross old spoon in there and contaminate everything and get a
shit ton of comments about it.
I don't care.
Almost there.
Okay, our risotto is done.
I tasted it, and my rice is fully tender throughout and also you can see like, it seems kind of
like a sudden change in the rice pieces and there's suddenly like a lot more swollen than
they were maybe five minutes ago, so that's good, and I am gonna add a little bit of butter
now, and let's get that stirred in, and I've got the heat turned off now.
It's okay to turn it off when it's a little bit wet because it's gonna thicken up a little
bit as it stands, and this is best if you serve it right away, but if you have leftover
risotto you can make little patties out of it and fry them in butter and it's real good
guys, and then some parmesan cheese.
The amount is variable.
This is about a cup which is some might call excessive, but.
. . whatever.
I think it's fine, and we'll stir that in.
My goodness.
Smells like clouds of popcorn and cheese in heaven.
Sorry that was probably a place that I dreamed about.
Okay, we're done.
We're ready to serve.
Look at how creamy and delicious that is.
Mmmmmmm.
Lovely, and you can top it with a little additional cheese, some peas would actually be really
good in this too, and a little bit of black pepper, or maybe a lot, so this is like on
par with macaroni and cheese to me as far as like comfort food stuff.
Mmmmmm!
Mmmmm.
Man!
It's so simple, so like delicate.
It's just really mildly flavored.
You could add all kinds of different sautéed vegetables or meats to this.
It would be really, really good served with like some spicy sausages alongside of it I
think because it's such a mild thing, just sort of like a blanket that you can use to
accentuate anything else that you want to serve.
So there you go.
There's how to make a basic risotto.
I hope you try it.
If you have any variations that you want to share, please leave them in a comment below.
If you have any questions on the recipe, also please comment, and if you would like to check
out my website HilahCooking.com, then if you have any more specific questions about the
recipe there, I will definitely see those comment, so go check it out.
All right, thank you for watching, and I hope everyone has a great week!
Ciao!