EZPZ Risotto

We were sitting in a restaurant in New York City, waiting for our heart shaped lobster ravioli from our waiter with a thick Italian accent, wondering why on earth he insisted on working with his shirt on.  We’ve been friends ever since.  We love you Daisy, thanks for posting this lazy risotto recipe today!

Risotto is one of my favorite things in the entire world, both to make and eat. Unfortunately for the at-home chef, risotto gets a bit of a bad reputation, as it is often billed as “labor intensive” or “messy.” Risotto, for those who don’t know, is loosely defined as “a deliciously creamy rice dish that will make you think you are eating a quart of cream and cheese but in reality you are not……” Risotto achieves its creamy texture and taste by cooking the rice slowly in small amounts of liquid allowing the stuff (technical term) inside the rice to slowly ooze out; typically this is/was achieved by stirring the entire time it cooks while carefully ladling (read: dripping) stock into your pan. I am entirely too lazy for that nonsense. Start to finish this recipe takes about 35 minutes, including chopping all of my veggies.

This is less a hard and fast recipe than some tips and tricks to implement in any risotto recipe you stumble across. Family favorites in my house include the Pioneer Woman’s Roasted Red Pepper Risotto and Cooking Light’s Lemon, Leek and Tarragon Risotto. My tips are demonstrated as I whip up an adapted recipe batch of the Pioneer Woman’s dish. (No turmeric, and an addition of shallots and asparagus.)

Risotto at home requires your ingredients, a tea kettle and a nice big dutch oven or sauce pan with a lid.

Start out by assembling your ingredients:

• 1 shallot & 1 small onion, diced
• 2 red peppers, diced
• 1 bunch of asparagus, chopped into thirds
• 1 quart of chicken stock (low sodium) + 1 can chicken stock (low
  sodium)
• 1/2 cup fresh grated Parmesan cheese
• 3 or 4 oz of goat cheese
• 1 3/4 cup of Arborio rice
• Red wine for deglazing the pan
• 1 tbs olive oil
• Salt & pepper to taste

First things first, I pour all of my chicken stock into my tea kettle and get it boiling. This is how you are going to transfer my hot stock into the dutch oven without making a huge mess. Add 1 tbs olive oil to your dutch oven and set it over medium heat. After you get those things going, dice your veggies, grate your cheese and measure your rice- then you can just add when ready, instead of trying to squeeze
things in as the dish cooks.

When your dutch oven is hot, add your peppers and onions and saute for 5 to 10 minutes, or until the veggies begin to soften and brown. Stir occasionally & add salt and pepper to taste (about 1/4 tsp of salt and 1/2 tsp of black pepper).

When your veggies are ready, dump all of the rice into the pan and let it cook for about a minute, stirring it a few times. This allows the rice to warm up and begin to toast which equals another delicious point at the end.

After you’ve let the rice cook for a minute or so, deglaze the pan with some wine. For people who like to measure, pour 1/4 cup of wine in, for those who don’t, just pour for a second or two and stir everything around. The wine will loosen all the yummy brown bits off the bottom of your pan and add flavor to the dish. Let it cook for a minute or two, stirring it once or twice. Once this is done you are ready for what was
traditionally the labor intensive step of adding stock every few minutes, stirring constantly in between each addition of stock.

Instead……

Stir the rice until it is nice and even in the bottom of the pan, and then pour in about 1/4 cup of the boiling stock from the tea kettle, or enough to almost cover the rice in liquid. Stir the stock/rice/veggie mixture, evening everything out and then…walk away. As long as your rice and liquid are in a nice even layer and your pan is on medium heat, it will bubble away on its own just fine. Return every 4 minutes or so to add another splash of stock and stir it so it is even, and then walk away again. Watch the latest episode of House Hunters, wrangle your kids, write your grocery list. Whatever you’d like to do. Just keep pop in to keep
adding stock every 3 to 4 minutes, give it a swirl and watch it transform from this:

To this:

See how the grains of rice have gotten fluffier and the consistency has gotten thicker and richer? No? Blame my photography skills, which are lacking.

Once a taste test reveals soft rice grains, typically about 25 minutes after you start adding stock and when you have just a little bit of stock left in your tea kettle, let the remaining liquid bubble off.

Add any remaining veggies (such as asparagus), stir, add your goat cheese, stir, and then add your Parmesan to the top. Stir once or twice and then turn the heat off, put the lid on, and back away for 5 minutes.

Something magical happens during that five minutes, and the cheese melts, the asparagus steams and the rice gives up its last remaining bits of stuff (again: technical term) and turns it into:

Serve on its own, with a big salad, or even topped with grilled shrimp or chicken. Enjoy!

(And don’t forget to wash out your tea kettle. Because, uh, chicken stock does not make delicious green tea. Not that something like that happened at my house once.)