Ingredients for Risotto

Video Transcript

"ANNE MOONEY: Hi, I'm Ann Mooney. I'm a personal chef here in Orlando in Winter Park, Florida. I'm also a food columnist for Simply The Best Magazine in Delray Beach, Florida, and today, I'm here on behalf of Expert Village to talk about risotto, one of the most classic, simple, and nutritious Italian dishes there is. It's becoming very popular in the United States. Now, as we about talked before, you need five basic ingredients. You need a short-grain Italian rice, sushi rice is not going to do it. It should be either arborio or carnaroli rice, and they are available at your local grocery store. You don't have to go some place special. You need a couple of tablespoons of either onions--oops--or shallots or some garlic, maybe. You need some olive oil, probably about three tablespoons of it, white wine--nothing is worse for white wine; everything is better--and five cups of any kind of stock you happen to have on hand. Now, all of these ingredients can be in your pantry at all times. So if you come home late from work and you're just exhausted, and you don't mind spending 27 minutes at the stove, you have a nutritious, wonderful, comfort meal right here at your finger tips. The other thing that's very important that you have is the right pan, and the pan that is the best for this purpose is--what I have here is a sort of a skillet wok but it's a wide pan but it's deep enough to allow the rice to absorb the liquid while it cooks and not have the liquid evaporate off too quickly. So if you have all this stuff, you can make risotto and you have a wonderful last-minute meal."