We’ve been requested to make a recipe for risotto since the very beginning of our YouTube journey, and although we prepare this dish very frequently for ourselves, we wanted to present you with something that is at least as good as regular risotto, and since vegan butter and cheese were a big disappointment in previous years, we didn’t want you to go through the trouble of looking for exotic ingredients to prepare this dish, and then end up with something that wasn’t optimal, and nowhere near perfect. Well, vegan cheeses have never been so sexy, and since some of them happen to taste pretty special as well, we decided that it was about time for us to share some risotto sorcery with you all. The only thing that I don’t understand is… why is this dish called the “death dish” on Masterchef? It’s one of the easiest recipes we’ve ever prepared, and due to the nature of the cooking process involved, it is also one of the most easy-to-fix plates of food I’ve ever had the pleasure to try. To the question “why mushrooms?” We answer – why not!
- Pour the stock into a saucepan and bring to a simmer over a medium heat. The cooking liquid should be kept at simmering temperature for the entire time. To make your own stock, you can follow this recipe.
- To toast the rice, heat a pan on a medium heat, pour in the rice and stir frequently until it becomes pearly but not browned (about 5 minutes). Remove from the heat and allow to cool.
- For the mushrooms, heat ½ tsp of oil in a non-stick pan. Add the mushrooms and cook for 4-5 minutes, until slightly browned.
- For the risotto, place a saucepan over medium heat, add in ½ tsp of oil and cook the onions without browning, until soft. Stir in the rice, deglaze the pan with the wine and stir continuously until the liquid has been absorbed.
- Add the salt and 1 ladleful of stock to the rice – or just enough to cover it – and simmer, stirring frequently but not constantly until most of the stock has been absorbed. Keep adding stock a ladle at a time, ensuring that each addition is absorbed before adding more. NOTE: You may not need all the stock mentioned in the ingredients.
- Keep adding stock and cooking the rice for 15-18 minutes in total, depending upon the rice used. After the first 7-8 minutes of cooking time, stir in the cooked mushrooms. The cooked rice should be tender, creamy and still with a light bite to it, and its texture should be fairly fluid, or “all’onda” (flowing in waves). There is more info on this in the tips section below.
- To finish, turn off the heat, stir through the pepper, the cream and the cheese, adjust salt to taste, cover with the lid, and let the risotto rest for 3 minutes before serving. This will allow the rice to relax and yield an even creamier result. Risotto should be eaten at once, as it continues to cook in its own heat, and can become dry with the grains becoming too soft.
- The toasting process heats the exterior of the grains and prevents breakage, which seals in the natural starches.
- The best rice varieties to make risotto are arborio, carnaroli, vialone nano, bomba and sushi rice.
- The stock can be substituted by water; nowadays many popular Italian chefs use regular water to cook the rice.
- You can use any kind of dry wine for this recipe, and you can also omit it or substitute it with ¼ tsp of white vinegar to be added with the cheese at the end of the cooking.
- We used a mixture of oyster, close-cup and shiitake mushrooms, but any other kind will work. To use another ingredient instead of mushrooms, simply prepare and cook them separately, and add them halfway through the cooking time as we did with the mushrooms.
- The traditional ingredient to “cream” the rice – “mantecare” in Italian – is butter. However, since this is a vegan version and we are already using unusual ingredients to obtain a rich flavour, cream is also a great option in this case. You can make your own cream by following our recipes here.
- The traditional texture of risotto is fairly fluid, or all’onda (“wavy, or flowing in waves”). It is served on flat dishes and should easily spread out but not have excess watery liquid around the perimeter. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risotto
