How To Make Fool-Proof Mushroom Risotto

It's Friday night and you're stuck in quarantine as you flip through channels, landing on one of Gordon Ramsay's shows. You see him screaming at people cooking risotto, and then you wonder...

"Huh, how hard can that be?"

So you go to the kitchen and see you have the ingredients for a mushroom risotto enough to feed 4-5 people (or just one, depending on how much you eat)

1 cup dry white wine

A pinch of Thyme

2 bay leaves

A desirable amount of mushrooms

2 shallots (minced)

4 garlic cloves (minced)

1 1/2 cup of arborio rice

4 tablespoons of butter

2 table spoons of olive oil

1/3 cups parmesan (or whatever vegan cheese if you're vegan)

Chicken broth or water or vegetable stock or straight up mushroom broth (depends if you're vegan or vegetarian or an all-eater)

Salt (optional)

Pepper (optional)

So you think, hey maybe this'll be fun! You search online and try to find a proper mushroom risotto recipe before you stumble into this one, the one written by a Chinese girl who spent a summer in Italy. Why not right? So you start following the instructions.

You notice you don't have mushroom broth so you decided to make it from scratch. If only you had some then you would be able to skip this step completely unless you want to make it even more flavourful.

You pour in 8-9 cups of water/chicken broth/vegetable stock in a large pot.

You add half of the mushrooms, bay leaves, and thyme.

You bring that up to boil then let simmer for at least 1/2 hour till about 6 cups.

You decide to go and watch a movie first, momentarily forgetting about the reducing broth. When you come back it's been reducing for nearly two hours. You take a sip and you realise how flavourful it is compared to the initial unreduced broth. You fish out the bay leaves with a pair of chopsticks (again, this was penned by a Chinese girl, you can strain it if you want).

Remember to keep the broth pot near you to make things easier and gives you the impression you're cooking like someone who can actually cook.

In another large pot, you heat up some olive oil and sauté some mushrooms, they can be chopped or not it's totally up to you.

After the mushrooms are nice and cooked, you add 4 tablespoons of butter in the pot.

As soon as it melts you add the minced shallots and garlic into the butter puddle with the mushrooms and sauté until fragrant.

Once it starts smelling all nice and garlicky, you pour in all the rice and stir quickly so all the ingredients get to know each other.

This is where all those hours of making Dalgona Coffee and/or doing arm workouts and/or whatever you do with your arms come in. During this time you can

You pour in the wine (into the rice-mushroom pot, not your glass) and start stirring until it's reduced to half

Grab a ladle or a cup and around half a cup or a cup of the broth into the rice

Keep stirring until it's been soaked up by the rice

Add more broth and keep stirring

Keep doing that until the rice is nice and al dente or whatever your preference

The end result should be nice creamy risotto, a very tired arm smelling of garlic and mushrooms, and a happy satisfied smile as you taste the end result. Why is it creamy despite having no cream? Because you stirred it the whole time.

If you feel it's not salty or flavourful enough, add seasoning AFTER it's done. Even though some people call for salt, I feel as though parmesan should do the trick.

If you want to add any sides it's fine, I personally like to add truffle oil after it's done and sear some scallops but you can add whatever you want with it. You pour the rest of a wine in a glass and eat the risotto while continue living your quarantine life.

You're glad you found this recipe.