Rice cooker risotto: it can be done – World’s Easiest

My prime motivation of laziness resulted in a brilliant discovery tonight: risotto can be made in the rice cooker. No, really. Stop — you sound like my dad. It really isn’t always about technique, you know. Sometimes the right ingredients and a little ingenuity can create an amazingly flavorful dish.

We were going to make a very simple Rachael Ray recipe for my sister and her family: Drunken Risotto with Grilled Chicken. Two things prevented me from following Rachael’s directions — I wanted to use brown rice instead of white rice, and I didn’t want to stand there for an hour, stirring the brown rice risotto, because it takes so much more liquid when using brown rice.

So here’s how I altered Rachel’s recipe to work like magic in my rice cooker.

Rice Cooker Drunken Risotto

Ingredients:

• 2 (rice cooker) cups of short-grain brown rice
• 2.5 cups red wine
• almost a whole 32-oz. container of chicken stock (I bet you could use the whole thing and it would still come out OK)
• 1 oz. dried porcini mushrooms
• 2 TB finely chopped fresh rosemary
• 1 finely chopped shallot (or onion)
• 1 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into pieces

Put all the ingredients except for the cheese and butter into the rice cooker and push the button. When it’s done (in about an hour or so), stir in the cheese and butter and serve. I didn’t even chop the mushrooms like Rachael suggests.

What you’ll get is a rich, mushroom-y risotto fit for company. My sister exclaimed on her first bite, “Oh my, I feel like I am at Michael Timothy’s!” If my easy rice cooker risotto can be compared to that of an urban bistro, then you probably want to try it. And it really is that good, nepotism not withstanding….

Clacked by Debbie McDuffee
on Mar 03, 2009 @ 15:10 EST5EDT