How to cook risotto

Tips on How you can cook, freeze and reheat risotto

Risotto is a traditional Italian dish best made with Arborio rice or Carnaroli. Should you not have this type of rice, use a short or medium-grained rice, which are stickier than long-grained ones. The main thing with this dish is to consistently give a gentle stir and add stock to the rice until the rice absorbs the stock and becomes rich and creamy like a proper homemade risotto.

The following is a simple recipe to make your first and very own fresh risotto.

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Here are the items you will need:

    1. Wooden spoon (better a wooden spoon rather than metal so as not to break the rice grains)

    2. Heavy bottomed, non-stick pan

    3. Arborio rice or Carnaroli rice (Risotto rice is now found in most supermarkets.)

    4. Butter

    5. Onion

    6. Olive Oil

    7. Chicken Stock (4 times the amount of rice you intend to cook) Or vegetable broth if vegetarian.

    8. Parmesan Cheese

Step 1: The first step is to heat your saucepan over a gentle fire and add in about 1 tablespoon of butter. Finely chop the onion, and add about 1/2 cup into the saucepan. Keep stirring until the onion turns translucent.

Step 2: Add in the uncooked rice and a bit of olive oil, and stir it to coat it with butter and onion. Keep stirring until you notice the rice change from white to translucent. You may add a little salt and pepper to add more flavouring.

Step 3: Your rice is now ready to soak up the chicken stock. Gently pour the stock until it just covers the rice. Stir the contents and bring it to boil. You can add dry white wine here as part of your added liquid if preferred. 

Step 4: When the rice is almost dry, repeat step 3. Continue doing this until the rice is cooked, you will notice the change in texture from watery to creamy. If you are unsure of when the rice will be ready, you can get a spoon and taste it, the rice should be moist but not hard. If you run out of chicken stock in the process, do not fret, you can replace the stock with water, it would not change the taste drastically.

Step 5: When the rice is ready, you can grate some Parmesan cheese over it and drizzle some olive oil. The dish is now ready to be served.

The recipe above is one of the most basic ways of cooking plain risotto. Once you are sure of how to cook the rice, you can transform a good risotto in many different ways according to your likes and dislikes. There are multiple flavour options from butternut squash risotto, mushroom risotto, saffron, a tomato sauce, seafood risotto and many more variations of this Italian rice dish.  

We hope you enjoyed making your freshly cooked risotto! In Italy this is considered a 'primo' or first course. However, outside of Italy it's usually a main dish. One time when you will see it as part of a main course is with Ossobuco which is served with polenta or ‘risotto alla milanese’. This is a type of risotto from Milan as you would expect from the name! It's quite plain but contains saffron threads which is how it gets its yellow colour.

If you’re wondering how to keep a whole batch of leftover risotto should you have some, here’s some more information on this delicious creamy dish. 

Risotto; should you have small portions left, can be stored in the fridge in an airtight container for up to five days, if it doesn’t contain meat of fish, and 3 days if it does. We tend to eat ours within a couple of days to be certain. Obviously the freezing process will detract a bit from the flavour and texture so the rice may become slightly grainy. 

If you wish you can freeze it in a rigid plastic container for up to 3 months. Defrost the frozen risotto in the fridge overnight, then thawed risotto can be reheated or place risotto still frozen in the oven in a covered dish to heat through gently at 180°C for 20-30 minutes until piping hot. I wouldn’t really recommend freezing this long though as you will lose most of the flavour and lovely texture.

Better still, should you prefer to make it into a new dish rather than freezing it. You can create risotto cakes, a bit like potato cakes, or use risotto leftovers for arancini balls.

Italians often make a large batch of risotto knowing that they will keep some back for making arancini rice balls the next day. This is a good idea as arancini take quite a long time to make, so this breaks down the work into stages. Arancini are balls of ragu' covered in risotto and then covered again in bread crumbs. They are delicious and have a slightly different shape and ragu' depending on where they are made in Italy.