My First Risotto
May 24, 2010
I’ve made my first-ever risotto last Sunday. It’s a recipe my mother taught me during her visit last week. Everyone loved it! I have always thought risottos are complicated to prepare. Maybe because of that, I have always skipped risotto recipes when looking for something new to cook. But I was wrong! The secret is to keep close track of the rice while it’s cooking. Here’s what you’ll need to serve 4 people with a delicious pork sausage and brown ale beer risotto:
- 2 teacups of Arborio rice
- 400g of your favourite pork sausage
- 1 big onion
- 3 table spoons of olive oil
- 2 pork stock cubes
- 250ml of brown ale beer
- 2 teacups of grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
- 4 table spoons of butter
The step-by-step instructions:
- Boil the sausages for 1-2 minutes, peel their skin, and chop them into small pieces
- Heat some water in a saucepan and melt the stock cubes in it
- In a large saucepan or a wok, add the olive oil, the chopped onion, and the chopped sausages. Cook them until the onion is translucent
- Add the rice to the saucepan and mix it thoroughly with the onion and sausages for a couple minutes
- Add the brown ale beer to the saucepan and let it evaporate
- From now on, you should keep gradually (a couple ladles at a time) adding the water with the melted stock cubes, waiting the water to evaporate, then adding more water, and so on. Continuously do that until the rice is cooked al dente.
Once the rice is cooked, remove the saucepan from heat, add the butter and the grated cheese, mix everything thoroughly and cover the saucepan with a lid. Leave it for a few minutes before serving. I use Newcastle but I guess you can use other brown ale beers of your choice. I’ve seen other risotto recipes using Emmental cheese instead Parmigiano-Reggiano. The cool thing about risottos is that once you learn a base recipe it’s quite easy to try variations with different ingredients. Buon appetito!