Cheese and Pears

Mushroom risotto (risotto ai funghi)

Posted on Feb 4, 2009 10:24:13 PM

If risotto is the most Italian recipes, mushroom risotto is probably the most popular. All risotto recipes are a routine, practice these steps and there’s not much that can go wrong.

Before I go ahead, one thing which is often forgotten of risotto, is that it is naturally gluten free, so it’s totally celiac friendly.

This mushroom risotto recipe is for 4 people:

• A medium onion
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 3 + 3 tablespoons olive oil
• between 250 and 300g  rice (about ½ pound) depending on how hungry you are
• 400g (14 oz) mushrooms
• 1 liter (2 pints) vegetable stock
• ½ glass of white wine (or maybe a little bit more…)
• 50g (3 ½ tbsp) grated Parmesan cheese
• 30g (1/3 cup) butter

Prepare the mushrooms. First step of a risotto recipe routine. Put the olive oil in a frying pan with the garlic at medium heat. When it’s hot, add the mushrooms and cook for 10-15 minutes. Check the seasoning. Remove them from the heat when they’re still a bit raw.

Heat the stock. Use home made stock or a cube. I find it handy to keep it in the pan simmering beside the rice.

Stage 1: let’s sauté. Chop the onion finely and add it to the sauce pan with the olive oil. Let it cook for about 10 minutes at low heat until tender.

Stage 2: enter rice. Turn up  the heat and pour the rice. Stir until it’s lucid and has absorbed the oil. Don’t let it burn!

Interlude: white wine. Pour the wine, it will evaporate quickly.

Stage 3: stock, please! When the wine has evaporated, turn down the heat and pour some stock. One or two ladles should be enough: the rice should be moistened but not covered. Keep stirring. When most of the stock is absorbed repeat the operation.

Stage 3 ½: the main ingredient. After 10 minutes add the mushrooms. They will bring some of their cooking liquid with them, so wait for it to be absorbed before adding more stock.

Stage 4: finish cooking. After about 10 more minutes start tasting the rice, it should be almost cooked.

Stage 5: the secret chamber. Remove the pan from the heat. Add the butter and Parmesan then stir briefly and put a lid on the pan. Let it rest for 3-4 minutes.

Remove the lid, stir furiously for 30 seconds and serve the mushroom risotto immediately.

A couple of notes on:

• The word. Risotto is the name of the dish, the Italian word for rice is riso
• The kind of rice. The best kinds of risotto rice you can buy are Arborio, Carnaroli, Vialone nano. As they’re usually fairly expensive outside of Italy, parboiled rice will do.
• Starchy or not. As stirring releases the starch in the rice, there usually are two opposite views: hardly stir until you add the butter in the end, or don’t stop doing it. I prefer stirring: not only because I make sure that the rice won’t stick to the pan, but also because I can know better when it’s time for the next ladle of stock.
• Wine. Buy cheap white wine and keep it in the fridge just for cooking. If you really want to be fussy about it, pour the wine in a glass half an hour before starting to cook: it will be at room temperature when you add it and won’t slow down the cooking.
• How creamy do you want it? Between a dry risotto with almost no stock left, and one so liquid you need a spoon to eat it, there are different degrees. It should be neither this nor that. Once you’re more familiar witht the recipe you’ll know when’t it’s time to take the pan off the stove.
• And if it’s creamy enough… Eat it in a bowl, not in a dish. All the juice will gather at the bottom and you can dip the rice in it.

If you liked this mushroom risotto, there are more risotto recipes

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