How to Cook Risotto

Video Transcript

"ANNE MOONEY: Hi, I'm Ann Mooney. I'm a personal chef in Orlando in Winter Park, Florida, and I'm here today on behalf of Expert Village. We're going to talk about risotto today, and risotto is the classic Italian one-dish, comfort-food meal. You can have everything you need in your pantry at your fingertips and you can have a home cooked meal in 27 minutes. Now, we've talked about ways to fix risotto and, sometimes, there are nights when you might have the basic five ingredients: the rice, the wine, the onions or shallots, the olive oil and the stock, but you might be at a loss for what else to do with it. And I imagine that in your cupboard, you have the ingredients to make that meal colorful and flavorful and appealing with only just a little pinch of invention, so we're going to invent a risotto now. We have the basic risotto on the stove, and this is the one that I just fixed a minute ago that's--that already has mushrooms and peas in it. And what I had--I found hanging around my refrigerator was some leftover peas about, maybe, half a cup and four mushrooms. I also put some cheese in it. But if I hadn't had those, I probably still would have had some dried herbs in my pantry. And the secret weapon which is saffron, if you have some, it turns everything this kind of wonderful color, like so. It needs a little bit more stock. And so you can do a risotto with nothing but herbs and spices. You can use marjoram, thyme, tarragon, parsley, cilantro, saffron. Now, see how beautiful that is. It just turns out bright yellow and it's absolutely wonderful. You could also put in some paprika and that would, you know, turn it red or orange. What you can do with this dish is almost limitless, and then if you finish it off with a tablespoon of butter and, maybe, just a little of bit of cream if you happen to have it on hand. Nobody's going to go hungry on this. This is a wonderful, colorful, appealing home-cooked meal that's going to fill everybody up."