Risotto
€4.30 │ €1.07 per portion │ Serves 4 │ 30-45mins │ Italy
A lean Italian classic with buttery leek. Risottos are simple, tasty, and warming. It's also easy to make plenty and freeze any extra for emergency meals!
What to serve it with?
Risotto 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.
Because risotto is so delicious, it is the perfect dish for using ingredients that you might have left over at the end of the week, especially vegetables. It's also quite a warming dish, so you can plan it on a colder/rainier day.
Risotto is easy to make, though it takes quite a bit of concentration as you need to continuously stir it. Given this, you want to plan a risotto when you have a bit of spare time to devote yourself to it. For me, making risotto 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!
Risotto is perfect for leftovers! It is delicious reheated the next day and responds well to the microwave.
Utensils
- Saucepan
- Sauté pot/wok
- Ladle
- Spatula
Base Ingredients
- 250g risotto rice
- 175ml dry white wine
- 1 stock cube for 1.5L of broth
- 1 onion
- 2 garlic cloves
- 1 tbsp butter
- 3 tbsp olive oil
- Cheese to grate/flake
- 2 bay leaves
- Thyme
- Parsley/basil
Here's some of what you could cook, setting aside until step 7:
- Courgette: 1 diced courgette, sautéed in olive oil +€0.45
- Leek: 1 large leek sliced - sauté whites in butter, add green when rice is 1/2 cooked +€0.60
- Mushroom: 400g sliced and sautéed in butter +€1.23
- Courgette, peas, and ricotta: Courgette as above, in step 7 also add 125g peas and 100g ricotta, serving with ricotta on top +€1.37
- Smoked sausage, carrot, and peas: Add carrot cut in demi-rondelles to broth, setting aside sautéed sausage +€3.95
- Chicken and saffron: Sauté in butter, spice with cumin, steep cold water with saffron and add after wine evaporates +€5.15
- Prawn: Sauté in butter until pink +€7.30
Method
- Pre-cook your star ingredient, cooking it and reserving. It's best to cook this separately first so that you can control the cooking of both it and the rice.
- Prepare the broth. Add the water, stock cube, bay leaves, and thyme. Keep at a rolling boil.
- Dice onion and garlic very thinly. Cover the surface of a sauté pot (which you used for your star ingredient) 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 rice. Stir the ingredients for 1 minute on high heat as the rice starts to absorb the flavour.
- Once the rice becomes translucent, gradually add your wine to deglaze the pan. Move the ingredients until the wine has evaporated.
- Bit by bit, add the broth two ladle scoops at a time, gently stirring until absorbed by the rice. Repeat until the rice is 2/3 cooked.
- Stir in your star ingredient that you set aside, saving some for presentation. Keep adding broth until the rice is fully cooked. Risotto is ready when you can trace a line with your spatula in the pan.
- Serve the remainder of your star ingredient, grated/flaked cheese, black pepper, and parsley/basil.
- Enjoy!