Orzo
€1.15 │ €0.29 per portion │ Serves 4 │ 30-45mins │ Italy
Orzo is simple, tasty, and warming - and it goes well with so many ingredients, making a different feeling dish every time! It's also easy to make plenty and freeze any extra for emergency meals.
Explore our flexible base recipe and suggestions for delicious orzo combos.
What to serve it with?
Orzo is great on its own! Though if you fancy a side, you could go for cherry tomato bruschetta, garlic bread, or a fresh, leafy salad.
How to use in a meal plan
Good home economics is using ingredients smartly - and that saves money and cuts food waste. A meal plan is a great way to do this.
Orzo goes great with plenty of ingredients, so it's perfect to use vegetables or proteins that you might have left over. It's also quite a warming dish, so you can plan it on a colder/rainier day. Plus, it's like halfway between pasta and rice so it satisfies both of those cravings.
It's easy to make orzo, though we find it's best to make like risotto, stirring continuously. That means you want to plan orzo when you have half an hour to devote yourself to it. For me, making orzo is a moment to decompress with music or a podcast - not to have work or anything on mind.
Leftovers
Spoonfeed meal plans save you money by using the economy of scale. Making extra from dinner into a leftover lunch avoids spending money and extra time cooking!
Orzo is perfect for leftovers! It is great reheated, including in the microwave.
Utensils
- Saucepan
- Sauté pot/wok
- Ladle
- Spatula
Base Ingredients
- 250g orzo
- 1 stock cube for 1L of broth
- 1 onion
- 2 garlic cloves
- 1 tbsp butter
- 3 tbsp olive oil
- Cheese to grate/flake
- 2 bay leaves
Here's some of what you could cook, setting aside until step 7:
- Mushroom & spinach: Slice and sauté 400g until just softened. Reserve, add back with spinach, season with parsley/basil +€2.11
- Aubergine & spinach in tomato sauce: Sauté 1 diced aubergine in olive oil, add crushed tomato with stock, top with fresh basil +€2.17
- Spinach, feta & cherry tomato: 175g spinach, 100g feta, and 125g cherry tomato, no pre-cooking. Season with parsley +€2.87
- Smoked salmon & broccoli: Add florets with about 6-8 minutes remaining, smoked salmon flakes at end and season with dill +€3.45
- Sun-dried tomato, kalamata olive, spinach & cashew: No pre-cooking needed, add fresh/dried basil +€5.45
- Persian-style meatball, carrot, red pepper, mandarin & pomegranate: Sauté meatballs in olive oil, then brown 1 carrot and 1 pepper and reserve. Add back in with 1 chopped mandarin, 50g pomegranate seeds, and 2 tbsp pomegranate molasses. Spice with cumin and smoked paprika +€5.60
Method
- Pre-cook any star ingredients, cooking it and reserving. It's best to cook this separately first so that you can control the cooking of both it and the orzo.
- Prepare a broth. Add water, stock cube, and bay leaves. Keep at a rolling boil.
- Dice onion (red or white, depends on your combo) and garlic very thinly. Cover the surface of a sauté pot (which you used for your star ingredients) with olive oil, turn to high heat and add the onion. After 2-3 minutes, when the onion gets translucent, add garlic and cook for 1 minute.
- There should be plenty of olive oil left in the pan when you add orzo. Stir the ingredients for 1 minute on high heat as the orzo starts to absorb the flavour.
- Add broth to deglaze the pan. Move the ingredients until it evaporates.
- Bit by bit, add the broth (and crushed tomato sauce, if you're using that) one ladle scoop at a time, stirring until absorbed. Repeat until orzo is 2/3 cooked.
- If your star ingredient needed pre-cooking, add it back in, saving some for presentation. Add in all other ingredients that did not need pre-cooking. Keep adding broth slowly until the orzo is al dente. The orzo is ready when you can trace a line with your spatula in the pan.
- Serve, topping with the remainder of your star ingredient, grated/flaked cheese, black pepper, and any herbs.
- Enjoy!