I've probably made this dish about once a week for the past four or five years. It is the dish that convinced me that the Instant Pot is a magical device. However, any pressure cooker should work just fine.
I'll share the basic approach and loose recipe. There is lots of room to experiment! 👩🔬
Important rice & broth ratio
This is the key 🔑: One part unwashed Arborio rice to two parts broth. Water probably works fine, but I've always used a simple powder broth.
I usually do 1 cup rice, 2 cups broth. That turns into four generous servings.
Ingredients
- Arborio rice
- Broth or water
- Optional meat (chicken is used in the picture)
- Veggies (onion + garlic is a good base. Also used: celery, mushrooms)
- Aromatics to taste.
- Parmesan cheese (about 2/3s the amount of rice being used)
- Unsalted butter (~2 tbsp per cup of rice)
- Lemon juice, but any acid works (balsamic, white vinegar)
- Salt and freshly ground black pepper
| If using an Instant Pot... |
|---|
| Put the pot on sauté mode for steps 1 and 2. Step 3 won't apply to you :) |
High level approach
- 🍖 Brown any meat. Cut meat into small chunks and brown it on a stainless steel pot or pan, with a little bit of oil. You're looking to develop a fond on the pot. You can skip meat entirely if you like!
- 🥕 Sauté veggies. I usually do celery and onion in some olive oil, followed by some form of mushroom. In the picture we used shiitake. I add a pinch of salt and some chili flakes if using mushrooms (salt helps draw out the water). Some garlic usually goes in too. Deglaze as needed.
- ➕ Add meat and veg to pressure cooker. If you're using an Instant Pot, all this happens in the same bowl so just skip to Step 4.
- 🍚 Add broth and rice. You can optionally toast the rice a little bit by adding it before you add the liquid. It is supposed to alter the flavour but I've never really noticed a difference.
- 🌿 Add aromatics. I usually do a bunch of fresh chopped thyme and some ground up dried porcini mushrooms. Try whatever you'd like!
- ⏱️ Pressure cook for 6 minutes on HIGH. When time is up, hit the pressure release (this is the loud and fun part!)
- 🧀 Stir in butter and cheese. This gets you to the creamy consistency.
- 🍋 Add salt, pepper and acid to taste. Add a little, taste, adjust, etc. You will likely need a decent amount of salt to really bring out the flavour.
- 🙃 Extra tricks. You can stir in a few huge handfuls of spinach here. It will wilt down and give you a brilliant green mix in. Once plated, I also like to crumble cashews atop for some crunch.
Sides in the photo
Our side was super simple. Asparagus spears pan fried in butter, with salt and pepper. Medium-high heat for maybe 3 or 4 minutes.
🌶️ Some Valentina hot sauce was spread around the plate, I find it makes a great colour contrast and lets you adjust spiciness per bite.
I must stir my risotto!
Want some classic risotto recipes? Once again I'll spread the joy and wisdom of Babish in two different approaches:
In the video below, Babish uses the pressure cooker method for one of his risottos :)
Thank you for reading!