Serves 4
Prep 10 min
Cook 35 min
Total 45 min
Level Attentive
Risotto has a reputation for being difficult that it absolutely does not deserve. It requires your presence — you cannot walk away — but it does not require skill. The technique is the same ladleful repeated twenty times: add stock, stir, wait for it to absorb, add more. That’s the whole thing. What you get at the end of those thirty minutes is a deeply savoury, creamy rice dish that tastes like considerably more effort went into it.
Mushrooms are the perfect risotto filling because they are intensely flavoured, release a lot of liquid that concentrates as it reduces, and pair naturally with the nuttiness of toasted rice and the sharpness of good Parmesan. Use a mix of varieties if you can find them — the combination of textures and flavours is far better than any single type alone.
Ingredients
The risotto
300 g Arborio or Carnaroli rice
1.2 L good vegetable or chicken stock
150 ml dry white wine
1 large white onion, finely diced
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
60 g unsalted butter
2 tbsp olive oil
80 g Parmesan, finely grated
Salt & white pepper to taste
The mushrooms
500 g mixed mushrooms (chestnut, portobello, shiitake)
20 g dried porcini mushrooms
200 ml boiling water (for soaking porcini)
2 tbsp butter
3 sprigs fresh thyme
The porcini liquid: Soak the dried porcini in boiling water for 20 minutes, then strain through a fine sieve or paper towel into your stock pot. The soaking liquid is intensely flavoured mushroom broth — add it to the stock you’ll use for the risotto. The rice absorbs this as it cooks and the depth it adds is remarkable.
Instructions
Soak the dried porcini. Pour 200 ml of boiling water over the dried porcini and leave for 20 minutes. Strain the liquid into your stock and chop the rehydrated mushrooms roughly. Keep the stock warm in a separate pot on a low flame throughout — adding cold stock to hot rice drops the temperature and slows the cooking.
Cook the fresh mushrooms first, separately. Heat 2 tbsp butter in a wide pan over high heat. When it foams, add the fresh mushrooms in a single layer. Do not stir for 90 seconds — you want them to brown, not steam. Season, add the thyme, toss, and cook another 2 minutes until golden. Remove and set aside. They go back in at the end.
Start the risotto base. In a wide, heavy pan, heat the olive oil and half the butter over medium heat. Add the onion with a pinch of salt and cook for 8 minutes until completely soft and translucent. Add the garlic and chopped rehydrated porcini, cook for 2 more minutes.
Toast the rice. Add the rice and stir to coat every grain in the fat. Toast for 2 minutes, stirring constantly. The grains will become slightly translucent at the edges. This step is not optional — toasting builds a protective layer around each grain that controls how the starch releases.
Add the wine. Pour in the white wine and stir until completely absorbed. The wine should sizzle when it hits the pan.
Add stock one ladle at a time. Add a ladleful of warm stock and stir gently and continuously until absorbed. Repeat. Each addition should take about 2 minutes to absorb fully. Continue for 18–22 minutes, until the rice is tender with a very slight bite at the very centre — not crunchy, not mushy.
The mantecatura — the final stir. Remove from heat. Add the remaining butter and all the Parmesan. Stir vigorously for 90 seconds until the risotto becomes creamy and slightly loose — it should flow slowly when you tilt the pan. This emulsification of butter and starch into the rice is called mantecatura and it is what makes risotto silky rather than gluey.
Fold in the mushrooms and serve immediately. Stir the cooked mushrooms through, check seasoning, and serve straight away in warm bowls. Risotto continues absorbing liquid as it sits and becomes too thick within minutes.
🍄The wave test: When the risotto is done, remove from heat, wait 30 seconds, then shake the pan gently. The risotto should ripple like a slow wave — all’onda, as Italians say. If it sits rigid, add a splash more stock. If it runs like soup, it needs another minute on the heat.
🧀Truffle risotto: Add 5–6 g of finely grated fresh or frozen truffle over each bowl at the very end, or stir a teaspoon of good truffle oil into the mantecatura. Skip the thyme — it competes. The mushroom and truffle combination is extraordinary.
Never rinse the rice. The surface starch on Arborio is exactly what creates the creaminess. Washing it removes this and gives you loose, separate grains — closer to a rice pilaf than a risotto.
The reward for your attention
Thirty minutes at the stove with a wooden spoon gives you something that restaurants charge serious money for. Risotto is one of the few dishes where the home version genuinely rivals what you’d get served in a good Italian restaurant — because freshness matters enormously here, and it goes directly from pan to bowl to table without sitting under a heat lamp.
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