recipe. If you you don't know what it is, risotto or risAHtto, I have no idea how to

pronounce it because I am not Italian, but it is a short grain rice that's cooked up

in broth until it's nice and creamy and then we add some cheese to it, and it's a really

comforting, easy, filling and a really pretty cheap dish to make, and it doesn't really

take very long, so let's get started, synchronized watches. I've gotta go get some watches guys.

Before you start anything you want to get eight cups of stock up to a simmer like so.

I am using a homemade chicken stock, but you can use vegetable stock or whatever, and we're

just gonna keep that simmering while we work on the rice. So I've got a little bit of butter

here melting. Don't run out on me now olive oil or you're dead to me. Okay, we're gonna

sauté about a cup of onion. You could use shallots too, and we're just gonna cook these

until they are soft with a little bit of salt and pepper. Once your onions look like this,

they are not brown, but they are soft and translucent we can add the rice, and this

is an arborea rice. It's sort of a medium, short-grained rice; really really starch.

The same family of rice that you would use to make paella or something like that, similar

to sushi rice in that it's got a lot of starch in it, and it's kind of short, fat little

grains, and we're just gonna kind of toast this in the butter. Well, not, no we don't

want to get it toasted, but we do want to get the grains sort of covered in oil and

fat and looking shiny and they'll start to turn opaque before they toast, and that's

what we're looking for. I mean they are already pretty opaque, but you'll see a difference.

Once your rice is looking like this, so it's all white as opposed to like having a little

white center and then being sort of translucent around the edges. We're gonna add half a cup

of white wine, and let that cook off, and if you don't drink alcohol, sorry buddy, you're

up shit creek. I am just kidding. You could just use like half a cup of broth instead

just to kind of get this started I guess, but you probably could actually just skip

right ahead to the cooking part since this really for flavor I think. So we're just gonna

cook it off until it's evaporated. Okay, so once your wine is absorbed and/or

evaporated, now is the time for the simmering stock. You want to add it about a cup at a

time at first and having it hot like this is gonna make the risotto cook a lot faster,

and it helps it get super-duper creamy. So we add a cup and then we stir and we wait

until that is all absorbed, and the stirring is very important. The constant stirring helps

that starch form. It helps it release and form a really creamy thing that's almost.

It has the consistency when it's done that like the rice has been cooked in heavy cream,

but surprise, it's actually pretty dietary except for all the butter and the parmesan

[laughs], and it take a lot of patience. Sorry guys. This is probably like the worst recipe

I myself could try to demo because I lack patience, but I will do my best. So we've

got it over kind of a medium-low heat which is tortuous for me, but it's happening. Things

are happening. All right when it's about absorbed like this. I mean you don't want it to like

dry out, but mostly absorbed. We can add another simmering stock and stir it again. So you

just want to keep adding the stock a cup at a time until you've added six cups, and it'll

take about five minutes or so in between each addition for it to absorb into the rice, and

then once we get to where we've added six cups, we'll watch it a little bit more carefully.

So I am just going to keep doing that, and I will see you in four cups worth of time,

four more cups I mean because we already did two.

Okay after our six cups of stock has been added and it's looking like this, that's when

you want to give it a taste, and we're looking for tender rice. Okay, this is great, so it's

like al dente basically. The center is cooked through, but it's still a little bit chewy,

so we might not need to add all eight cups, but now we're gonna start adding it in smaller

increments like just a half a cup at a time, stir that in just until the rice is cooked

through, so like when you taste it, it doesn't like get stuck in your teeth like the last

little bite that I got did a little bit, but not that it's mushy, like the rice grains

should still maintain their integrity and still look like rice grains, and if you wanted

to add like sautéed mushrooms to this and do a mushroom risotto or whatever, sautéed

asparagus or anything like that, you could add that in at this point. Like, once your

risotto is almost finished cooking is when you can add some sautéed vegetable or something,

and you'd also be tasting for salt when you taste it now. My broth was really well-seasoned,

so I don't think I need to add any salt to the risotto, but if you're using a low sodium

stock or something you made yourself without salt in it, then you might want to add some

salt. Nice, so you can see how thick this liquid is becoming. God, it's beautiful. It's

like mesmerizing. This is cooler than a lava lamp. I am gonna stick my same gross old spoon

in there and contaminate everything and get a shit ton of comments about it. I don't care.

Almost there.

Okay, our risotto is done. I tasted it, and my rice is fully tender throughout and also

you can see like, it seems kind of like a sudden change in the rice pieces and there's

suddenly like a lot more swollen than they were maybe five minutes ago, so that's good,

and I am gonna add a little bit of butter now, and let's get that stirred in, and I've

got the heat turned off now. It's okay to turn it off when it's a little bit wet because

it's gonna thicken up a little bit as it stands, and this is best if you serve it right away,

but if you have leftover risotto you can make little patties out of it and fry them in butter

and it's real good guys, and then some parmesan cheese. The amount is variable. This is about

a cup which is some might call excessive, but. . . whatever. I think it's fine, and

we'll stir that in. My goodness. Smells like clouds of popcorn and cheese in heaven. Sorry

that was probably a place that I dreamed about. Okay, we're done. We're ready to serve. Look

at how creamy and delicious that is. Mmmmmmm. Lovely, and you can top it with a little additional

cheese, some peas would actually be really good in this too, and a little bit of black

pepper, or maybe a lot, so this is like on par with macaroni and cheese to me as far

as like comfort food stuff. Mmmmmm! Mmmmm. Man! It's so simple, so like delicate. It's

just really mildly flavored. You could add all kinds of different sautéed vegetables

or meats to this. It would be really, really good served with like some spicy sausages

alongside of it I think because it's such a mild thing, just sort of like a blanket

that you can use to accentuate anything else that you want to serve. So there you go. There's

how to make a basic risotto. I hope you try it. If you have any variations that you want

to share, please leave them in a comment below. If you have any questions on the recipe, also

please comment, and if you would like to check out my website HilahCooking.com, then if you

have any more specific questions about the recipe there, I will definitely see those

comment, so go check it out. All right, thank you for watching, and I hope everyone has

a great week! Ciao!