Perfect Risotto

Yes, you can get perfectly creamy, nutty risotto without half an hour of stirring.

Overhead view of risotto

Serious Eats / Maureen Celestine

Why This Recipe Works

  • Using a wide, shallow skillet allows for more even cooking of the rice.
  • It also lets you add all the liquid at one time, and you only have to stir the rice once.
  • Rinsing rice in the cooking liquid means you retain all of the starch, which will otherwise break down when the rice gets toasted in oil and butter. The result? Creamyandnutty-tasting risotto

哥伦比亚,我的妻子喜欢大米,a diminutive frame prone to coldness, she also loves soup. So it's no wonder that risotto—which can be un-poetically described as soupy rice—lies somewhere between me and cheese sauce on her list of greatest loves.*

As such, I considered it my husbandly duty to discover not just how to make great risotto, but to discover how to do it in the most efficient way possible.

See, by fulfilling at leastoneof my husbandly duties (one of the most important, no less), I figure it gives me a little leeway on taking my time with the others.**

*Since getting married, I've given cheese sauce a run for its money but have yet to overtake it

**I swear an anniversary present and second anniversary present are coming soon. Both on back order.

Everyone knows risotto as the self-saucing Italian rice dish with the notoriously tedious-to-prepare reputation. It's also often stodgy, thick, and heavy. What is perfect risotto? First off, it should be saucy in texture. A perfect plate of risotto should flow like lava if you tilt the plate. Spoon it onto a hot dish (and youmustuse a hot dish), and it should slowly spread out until it forms a perfectly level disk. Sticky, tacky—or worse—gluey, are words that shouldneverenter your head when eating it.

Listen: I could give this article about risotto the typical sensationalist opening and craft some story about howeverybody(particularly those with Italian grandmothers) knows that to make great risotto, you've got to stir it gently and constantly, adding hot broth to the rice one cup at a time, waiting until it's absorbed before you add the next.

Icoulddo that, but it'd be disingenuous. I mean, by this late stage in the game is there anyone in the world beside hard-line Italians who doesn't know that you can make a bowl of luscious, al dente, perfectly mantecato risotto without preheating your broth or stirringconstantly?

I mean, people have been saying and writing about it for years now. I'm strongly convinced that the myth only exists because of grandmothers who used risotto as an excuse to either keep an unnecessary kitchen helper occupied for half an hour, or as an excuse to escape from the rest of the family for a while.

That said, I've still got a ton of risotto questions left unanswered, so this week I decided to test just about every aspect of risotto I could think of to separate fact from fiction.

Which type of rice is best? How much do you really need to stir? Is toasting necessary? And what about mounting with cream?

6.6 pounds of rice later, I've got a few answers.

So many questions, so many grains of rice, so little time. Let's get right to it, shall we?

Rice Advice: Types of Rice for Risotto

Arborio rice

First question: Which type of rice makes the best risotto?

Rice contains two molecules that make up its starch content, amylose, and amylopectin. Generally speaking, rices with a higher proportion of amylopectin to amylose will tend to soften more completely and thicken their sauce more strongly. All risotto starts with a short- to medium-grain form of rice high in amylopectin. It's the exact ratio of amylose to amylopectin that determine the final texture of your rice and sauce.

There are dozens of cultivars of short-grained rice used in Italy, but here in the U.S., you're likely to see only three types that'll work for risotto.

  • Bombais a Spanish rice used primarily for making creamy paellas. It's extremely short-grained, with a moderate level of amylopectin and makes a very fine risotto, despite the fact that it comes from the wrong country.
  • Arboriois the most common rice of choice. It's short-grained with almost zero amylose. It has a tendency to create averythick sauce, and can very easily be overcooked to the point of mush because of its lack of structure. Even perfectly cooked Arborio will tend to be relatively soft.
  • Carnaroli or Vialone Nanoare not quite as available as Arborio, but are my favorite varieties of rice for risotto. They strike a good balance between creaminess and intact texture. If you can find one of these, use them.

You may see the words fino or superfino written on the packaging of imported rices. While it'd be nice to imagine some Italian committee deciding exactly how fine a particular grain of rice is, it's not an indication of quality or attractiveness: it refers only to the width of the grain. You can mostly ignore these labels.

The Basics: Adding Broth and Stirring

Basic instructions for old-school risotto: Heat up a large pot of stock on the stove and keep it at a bare simmer. Toast rice briefly in butter and/or olive oil, then add a single ladleful of stock (you can use wine for this first liquid addition) and stir slowly with a wooden spoon until the stock is absorbed. Add another ladleful and repeat.

Continue doing this until the stock has all been absorbed, the rice is plump, and the broth is creamy. Finally, remove from heat and add cold butter and/or cream and/or parmesan cheese while stirring vigorously to halt cooking and add some extra richness and creaminess to the sauce.

This method works alright, but it's crazy inefficient. First off, there's no need to heat up the broth in a separate pot while you make the risotto. Sure, it'll shave a few minutes off the cook time of the actual rice, but you add that time back and more in the amount of time it takes to heat up a pot of stock, not to mention washing two pots instead of one. I've made risottos with stock straight from the fridge with no discernible difference in the final product.

And what about adding liquid all at once vs. in batches and stirring the whole time?

There are a couple of arguments in favor of adding in batches and stirring. First:when you add in smaller batches, the rice is kept in close contact. More starch is rubbed off, and your risotto ends up creamier.

For now, we'll ignore this theory and get back to it in a minute. The second argument is that it helps your rice cook more evenly. This one happens to be true. Sort of.

Cook risotto in a standard risotto pot—that is, one that is relatively narrow along the bottom, and your rice and liquids stack. There's a huge height difference between the rice at the bottom of the pot and that at the top. The rice at the bottom, closer to the heat source, overcooks while the rice at the top barely gets done in time.

Stirring helps prevent this, but there's an even easier way: just use a wider, shallower pan.

Risotto cooking in a wide shallow skillet

In a high quality wide skillet, the rice forms a fairly even thin layer along the bottom, which translates to much more even cooking. Using very low heat after initially bringing the liquid to a boil also helps. By cooking rice in a wide skillet like this, I found that I could get perfect results by adding the rice and almost all of the liquid at once, covering, and cooking over very low heat until the rice was done, stirring just once during the process.

Creamy risotto cooking in a wide skillet

With the reserved liquid, I could then thin out the sauce to the desired consistency, boiling it hard for just a moment to thicken it up properly.

Now, on to bigger, bolder questions:

To Toast or Not To Toast?

Butter and oil in a pan prepped to toast arborio rice for risotto

First off: Butter, olive oil, or both? It's largely a matter of personal taste. I like the complexity that you get from both types of fats as opposed to just one. There are some folks out there who claim that you add oil to the butter to prevent it from burning when you heat it, since butter starts burning in the low 300°F range, while most oils can get to 400°F or beyond before they start smoking.

This is silliness and shouldn't be believed. A mixture of butter and oil will still burn at the same temperature as butter. I know because I've tried it. It's the milk proteins in the butter that burn, and they don't care whether they're heated in oil or in pure butterfat. Theonlyreason to combine butter and oil is for flavor, and you have to be careful not to burn the mixture when you heat it. Adding your rice or aromatics just as it stops foaming is key.

Toasting arborio rice for risotto

I've always understood that the point of toasting risotto is to help develop flavor. By adding the dried grains of rice to a pan of hot butter and olive oil, you develop some really nice nutty, toasty flavors. But what else is going on when you toast rice?

I cooked up two identical batches of risotto side-by-side. The first I made with absolutely no toasting. The liquid and rice went into the pot at the exact same time. The latter, I toasted the rice for 3 to 4 minutes before adding the liquid, during which time it acquired a faint golden hue and a nutty aroma.

Here's what I ended up with:

Toasted vs untoasted arborio rice for risotto

Obviously, thereissomething else going on while toasting: toasted rice produces a risotto that's noticeably less creamy than un-toasted rice.

So on one hand, you've got great, super-creamy rice, but with little toasted flavor. On the other, you've got rice with great nutty, toasty flavor, but relatively little creaminess. The problem is: How do you get your risotto both creamyandnutty?***

***Dennis Lee, please insert joke here

Isolating Starch

这是我的理论:我知道淀粉可以打破道n under high heat. Ever compare the thickening power of a very light roux to a darkly cooked roux? The blonder it is, the better is thickens. Perhaps a similar thing was happening to the starch in my rice as I toasted it, robbing it of its thickening power.

To test this theory, I had to first isolate the starch used for thickening from the rest of the grain.

Now, some folks claim that the starch that thickens the sauce in a risotto comes from within the rice grains themselves—indeed, they say, that's the very reason you have to stir rice as it cooks. The jostling movement of the grains causes them to rub against each other, slowly scraping starch off and into the liquid.

Thiscouldbe true, but it doesn't exactly explain how many of the more modern no-stir risotto cooking methods function so well. Is it possible that this thickening starch is simplyon the surface of the grains to begin with? There's a very easy way to test if this is true or not: just rinse the rice.

Rinsed arborio rice with starchy water

I ran my rice grains under a cold tap inside a metal strainer, rubbing them and watching as a starchy, milky white liquid collected underneath. I then cooked it just as I had before. What I ended up with was risotto with nearly no creaminess at all.

Cooking a second batch according to the traditional method of stirring the entire time produced a risotto that was no more creamy. This confirmed that indeed, most of the starch that thickens a risotto resides in fine particles on the surface of the rice from the very beginning—stirring and jostling have little to do with its release. Even cooking is theonlyreason to stir risotto.

This fact handily provides us with the perfect solution for getting great toasted flavorin additionto perfect creaminess: simply remove the starch before toasting, and add it back before hydrating.

To test this, I cooked another batch of risotto, this time dumping the raw rice into a bowl and pouring my cold broth directly on top. I agitated the rice to release all of the starch, then poured it through a fine mesh strainer, reserving the starchy, cloudy broth on the side. (It was starchy enough that you could see white starch settling on the bottom).

After draining, I toasted my rinsed rice in a mixture of butter and olive oil until it was just beginning to turn golden brown. Finally, I added the starchy liquid back to the pot, brought it to a simmer, lidded it, and cooked it, stirring once in the middle.

What I ended up with was pure win:

Spoonful of creamy risotto

Risotto that was perfectly creamy,andnutty all in one pot. All that was left was to finish it with some extra cream (I like to whip my cream first to introduce a bit of air into the mix for a lighter risotto) and some cheese.

Adding whipped cream to risotto

Of course, there are all kinds of flavor variants you can work in here. Vegetables, dried mushrooms, fresh mushrooms, meats, saffron, other wines, miso paste—whatever—you've got the foundation, now go build your house.

(Protip: go high-low and stir in somenacho cheese saucefor anawesometreat.)

Spooning a bite of risotto from a plate

With this epic project finally finished, I think I've earned at least a couple week's worth of respite from wife-caring duties. How fortuitous, as that's how long it's going to take her to get through all the risotto stockpiled in the fridge.

October 2011

Recipe Details

Perfect Risotto

Prep10 mins
Cook35 mins
Active15 mins
Total45 mins
Serves4 to 6 servings

Yes, you can get perfectly creamy, nutty risotto without half an hour of stirring.

华体会应用下载

  • 1 1/2 cups (about13 1/2ounces)risotto-style rice (see notes)

  • 1quart(950ml)low-sodiumhomemadeor store-boughtchicken stock

  • 1cup(240ml)white wine(optional; can be replaced with additional broth)

  • 2tablespoons(30g)butter, plus more for finishing, if desired

  • 2tablespoons(30ml)extra-virgin olive oil

  • 2mediumclovesgarlic, grated on a Microplane (about 2 teaspoons)

  • 2smallshallots, finely minced (about 2 tablespoons)

  • 3/4 cup (180ml)heavy cream, whipped to stiff peaks

  • 3 ounces (85g)finely grated Parmesan cheese

  • Kosher saltand freshly ground black pepper

  • Chopped herbsor other garnishes, as desired

Directions

  1. Combine rice, chicken stock, and wine in a large bowl. Agitate rice with fingers or a whisk to release starch. Strain through a fine-mesh strainer set in a 2-quart liquid cup measure or another large bowl. Allow to drain 5 minutes, stirring rice occasionally.

    Four image collage of removing Starch from rice

    Serious Eats / Maureen Celestine

  2. Heat butter and oil in a heavy 12-inch skillet over medium-high heat until foaming subsides. Add rice and cook, stirring and tossing frequently, until all liquid has evaporated, fat is bubbling, and rice has begun to take on a golden blond color and nutty aroma, about 5 minutes. Add garlic and shallots and continue to cook, stirring frequently, until aromatic, about 1 minute. Give reserved broth a good stir and pour all but 1 cup over rice. Increase heat to high and heat until simmering. Stir rice once, cover, and reduce heat to lowest possible setting.

    Four image collage of adding butter, rice, shallots, and stock to pan

    Serious Eats / Maureen Celestine

  3. Cook rice for 10 minutes, undisturbed. Stir once, shake pan gently to redistribute rice, cover, and continue cooking until liquid is mostly absorbed and rice is tender with just a faint bite, about 10 minutes longer.

    Shot of pan with lid on

    Serious Eats / Maureen Celestine

  4. Remove lid and add final cup of stock. Increase heat to high and cook, stirring and shaking rice constantly, until risotto is thick and creamy. Off heat, fold in heavy cream and cheese. Season to taste with salt and pepper and stir in herbs as desired. Serve immediately on hot plates.

    Four image collage of adding stock, cream, and cheese to risotto

    Serious Eats / Maureen Celestine

Special Equipment

Microplane grater, fine-mesh strainer, heavy 12-inch skillet

Notes

I prefer using carnaroli rice for its slightly longer grains and firmer texture. Feel free to use any risotto-style rice, like arborio or vialone nano.

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Nutrition Facts(per serving)
338 Calories
23g Fat
23g Carbs
9g Protein
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Nutrition Facts
Servings: 4 to 6
Amount per serving
Calories 338
% Daily Value*
Total Fat23g 30%
Saturated Fat 12g 61%
Cholesterol57mg 19%
Sodium827mg 36%
Total Carbohydrate23g 8%
Dietary Fiber 0g 1%
Total Sugars 2g
Protein9g
Vitamin C 2mg 9%
Calcium 165mg 13%
Iron 2mg 10%
Potassium 264mg 6%
*The % Daily Value (DV) tells you how much a nutrient in a food serving contributes to a daily diet. 2,000 calories a day is used for general nutrition advice.
(Nutrition information is calculated using an ingredient database and should be considered an estimate.)