Mushroom Risotto with Summer Truffles

Name: Mushroom Risotto
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 60 min
Total time: 70 min
Ingredients: 150 g arborio rice; 1 small onion; 2 cloves garlic; 400 grams mushrooms (e.g. button, chestnut and porcini, sliced); 1 l vegetable stock; 150 ml white wine; 2 tbsp creme fraiche; 2 tbsp parmesan; 1 tbsp truffle oil; 2 sprigs thyme; 1 smal summer truffle (thinly sliced)

This Creamy Mushroom Risotto is a simple dish that you can easily make extra special with some exotic mushrooms and a few thin shavings of summer truffle. Get the recipe below.

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Which mushrooms work best in Mushroom Risotto?

One of my favourite things about mushroom risottos is that you can use a wide variety of mushrooms which means you can almost make a different dish every time. Some week’s I will mainly use chestnut mushrooms. They give a really deep and earthy flavour.

If you’re making this dish for a special occasion you might want to use some more interesting edible varieties of mushroom that you will be able to find in most supermarkets and specialist food shops. I love chanterelles, shitake, porcini and king oyster mushrooms. All of these mushrooms can bring something extra special to your cooking. Each will bring a different flavour and texture to the dish. I always try to use a mix of mushrooms when I can. Whichever mushrooms I use, to balance the dish I like to serve it with some broccoli and asparagus. iron rich, green vegetables are perfect.

Truffles are also from the fungi/mushroom family which is why they go so well! They add a real richness to the dish – more on finding fresh truffles below.

I’ve always been fascinated by the wide variety of mushrooms; their different colours, sizes, shapes and textures. Going on a foraging course with a particular focus on wild mushrooms is something that I really hope to do in the near future!

Where can I find fresh truffles?

Truffles are a type of fungus that grows underground. They smell and taste amazing, and you only need a small amount to add a real hit of flavour to your dish. Truffles work particularly well with other ingredients that are quite mild, and not very complex. This lets the truffle take centre stage. Fatty foods (like creme fraiche) and bland foods like rice are perfect for this. That’s why this Mushroom Risotto with Truffles works so well.

I will admit that truffles are an expensive ingredient. This is because they are difficult to cultivate and hard to find in the wild. It’s probably no surprise that they appear on high end restaurant menus but don’t feature on our dinner plates at home.

That being said, because truffles have grown in popularity in recent years they are becoming more accessible to home cooks like you and me! Some supermarkets in the UK stock small truffles stored in jars. Alternatively you can buy them from specialist food stores like Sous Chef or Farmdrop. Summer and autumn truffles are the cheapest of the bunch so keep an eye out on Farmdrop around August/September when they often have them in stock!

If you can’t get hold of fresh truffles then a drizzle of truffle oil is a nice way of adding that flavour. Alternatively, add some porcini mushrooms to the dish (or porcini mushroom powder) for a similar flavour.

How to make the perfect Mushroom Risotto every time

Risotto sometimes has a reputation for being difficult to make. People are scared of under cooking the rice or cooking it too much so that they end up with a sticky mess. The good news is that risottos are actually simple to make. Once you understand the key elements and what to look out for you will make the perfect risotto every time.

What rice do you use to make risotto?

You can’t make risotto with any old rice. There are two types that are commonly used and easy to get hold of. They are: Arborio rice and Carnaroli rice. These varieties of rice are perfect for making risotto because they are short grains that are round and plump. They also have a high starch content – a really important feature!

How to cook risotto rice

The first step to cooking risotto rice is actually nothing to do with rice. You first need to sweat your onions in olive oil. It will take roughly 10 minutes until they are soft and translucent and ready for the next step. Only once the onions are ready do we add garlic and mushrooms. We let them flavour the oil before we add our rice. By adding the rice to the oil and toasting it, we are creating a shell around each grain. This means that when we add the stock later, the rice slowly absorbs it without getting overly soggy (or worse, bursting!) It also means they take on even more of the flavours we have added to the oil.

Once the rice has been toasted we begin adding liquid to cook the rice. For this Mushroom Risotto I use a mix of white wine and vegetable stock. Adding wine is traditional and it’s proper to add it before the stock. It’s important to keep the stock warm so that when it is added to the dish it doesn’t reduce the temperature of the dish. That way it will cook consistently and evenly.

It’s important to add the stock in small quantities and let it fully absorb into the rice grains before adding more. As the dish simmers, the steam makes the grains of rice bump up against each other and they then release their starch. It’s the starch that makes the risotto creamy. Stirring also releases starch. As with most things in cooking, you can overdo it and underdo it. When stirring risotto you want to do it enough that it doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pan but you don’t want to stir it so that it becomes too sticky and claggy.

Once all the stock has been absorbed it’s time to add dairy. For my Mushroom Risotto I add creme fraiche. It’s creamy but mild. A little bit of parmesan adds a sharp flavour but we don’t want it to dominate the dish.

Make it vegan

Making this Mushroom Risotto vegan is really easy. Vegan parmesan is available in lots of supermarkets. But, if you can’t find it then don’t worry, I will show you how to make your own here. I always have a jar of it to hand! For the creme fraiche, I like to use Oatly Creme Fraiche. It makes this Mushroom Risotto really creamy. You’d never know it was plant based!

The recipe