Mushroom Risotto With Truffle Oil Recipe
By Nicola Lando
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20 minutes prep time
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60 minutes cook time
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Intermediate
This is a luxurious and comforting wintry dish. To serve for a dinner party, prepare steps 1-5 in advance. Spread the par-cooked rice on a baking sheet to cool quickly, and refrigerate. Continue from step 6 just before serving.
To include more vegetables, cook fresh mushrooms in butter along with the dried mushrooms, or stir in a little spinach and nutmeg towards the end. A simple way to check the risotto consistency when cooked, is to draw a line across the base of the pan with a spoon. The base should show for just a second or two, before the risotto flows back to cover it.
What goes with mushroom risotto?
Mushroom risotto is earthy and rich. The bouncy mushrooms provide a great texture to contrast with al dente arborio rice, however, if you want a little crunch, try toasting some cashews to add on top. Although the flavours of mushroom risotto make it best suited to autumn and winter, it would be lovely eaten as part of an Italian spread in summer alongside a zingy green salad with squidgy focaccia on the side.
Does meat go with mushroom risotto?
Mushrooms have a meaty texture and umami flavour compared to green vegetables, so there is no need to add meat in a mushroom risotto. However, if you would like to add meat, juicy chicken is the best match.
Ingredients Serves: 4
- 15g dried mushrooms
- 2 shallots or 1 onion, finely diced
- 150ml dry white wine (or hot water if preferred)
- 1tbsp oil
- 50g unsalted butter
- 250g carnaroli risotto rice
- 50g parmesan, finely grated
- Truffle oil
Method
- Rinse the dried mushrooms thoroughly in several changes of water to remove any sand or grit. Place mushrooms in a pan, and pour over 500ml boiling water. Simmer on a medium heat for 7 minutes.
- While the mushrooms simmer, heat the oil in a heavy bottomed saucepan. Add the diced onion or shallots, and cook gently until translucent.
- Lift out the mushrooms from the cooking water with a slotted spoon, and reserve the liquid, which is now mushroom stock. Cut or tear the mushrooms into bite-sized pieces.
- Pour the mushroom stock through a very fine sieve or muslin cloth into a jug, taking care to discard any grit or sand at the bottom. Measure the stock back into a saucepan, and make up to 1l with boiling water. Set over a low heat, add 2/3 tsp of fine sea salt, and keep just below a simmer.
- When the onion or shallots are cooked, increase heat to medium and add the rice. Stir continuously, until the rice is almost too hot to touch. Pour over the white wine, and stir until all the wine is absorbed. Reduce heat to low, add half the hot stock and leave to simmer for 10 minutes.
- While the rice cooks, fry the mushrooms in half the butter with a pinch of salt, over a very low heat for 5 minutes. Set aside.
- After simmering the rice for 10 minutes, add the remaining hot stock one ladle at a time, stirring continuously, until there are just a couple of ladles left in the pan and the rice is al dente. This should take about 5 minutes. The mixture will look fairly soupy – it will thicken further when you add the parmesan and leave to stand.
- Turn off the heat. Stir through the remaining butter, mushrooms and parmesan. Cover and leave for 5 minutes.
- Season to taste. Serve, drizzled with truffle oil.
Morel mushrooms are a rich source of iron and vitamin D, so are a great addition to your meals during the long winter months. Or why not dig into a bag of our addictive black truffle crisps?
Feeling inspired? Read our ultimate guide to truffle oil, and check out our range of dried mushrooms and truffles.
About the author
Nicola is co-founder and CEO at Sous Chef. She has worked in food for over ten years.
Nicola first explored cooking as a career when training at Leiths, before spending the next decade in Finance. However... after a stage as a chef at a London Michelin-starred restaurant, Nicola saw the incredible ingredients available only to chefs. And wanted access to them herself. So Sous Chef was born.
Today, Nicola is ingredients buyer and a recipe writer at Sous Chef. She frequently travels internationally to food fairs, and to meet producers. Her cookbook library is vast, and her knowledge of the storecupboard is unrivalled. She tastes thousands of ingredients every year, to select only the best to stock at Sous Chef.
Nicola shares her knowledge of ingredients and writes recipes to showcase those products. Learning from Sous Chef's suppliers and her travels, Nicola writes many of the recipes on the Sous Chef website. Nicola's recipes are big on flavour, where the ingredients truly shine (although that's from someone who cooks for hours each day - so they're rarely tray-bakes!).
