For my first time making a risotto, I tried to keep it about as simple as possible.

Time: 1hr 45 minutes

Difficulty: 1/5

Ingredient Availability: 5/5

For some reason I had never made risotto before this. I think it has held a somewhat elevated level of difficulty in my mind. I had some extra time and some arborio rice, so I decided to find out how difficult or easy risotto is. I chose this recipe because it seemed like a pretty simple version of a risotto and would give me a good baseline for risottos going forward. I’ve seen a lot of risottos topped with mushrooms, which I think would have been nice, but I just didn’t have any.

Key Ingredients and Omissions:

No ingredients from this recipe were left out. I’m not even sure that using a better quality butter or cheese would make much of a difference as long as you grate the cheese yourself.

Tools:

• Rasp Style grater or box grater

• Large pots

Cooking Review:

Prep: 20 Minutes

To prep for this recipe, I grated the cheese, chopped the onion, and cubed the butter. Obviously, grating nearly 2 cups of cheese took the most time here.

Cooking the onion: 16 Minutes

While the salted water in one pot came to a simmer, I heated another pot and added oil, onions, and salt. After 6 minutes of cooking on medium, I added a half cup of water and continued cooking for 10 minutes. I did add a little extra water during this time. At this point, all the water had evaporated.

Cooking rice: 31 minutes

The rice was added and stirred with the oil and onions for 4 minutes until the edges were translucent. The white wine was then added and had evaporated after 3 minutes. Next, the infamous additions of water commenced. I added 10 additions of about 3/4 cups of water over a period of 24 minutes. Be sure to taste the rice as it gets close to done to ensure it doesn’t get overcooked.

Finishing: 6 minutes

To finish, the butter is added to the rice off the heat until completely melted. The cheese is then stirred in until melted. I didn’t need to add any additional salt. I just topped with a little more cheese and black pepper when plating.

Analysis:

Risotto is known for its creaminess and this one is not lacking in that area at all. The rice is well cooked, not mushy and not hard. The predominant flavor is of the cheese, but the pepper on top is very noticeable and pleasant. The overall flavor balance is very good, not needing any additional salt, but not lacking it either. The only things that could make this better in my opinion is adding some toppings to increase the textural and flavor variety. This recipe gets a 9/10. It’s really no where near as difficult or complicated as I was thinking it would be and it tastes very good. You just need to monitor it for the entire cooking time, but that’s not too bad in my opinion.