Vegan creamy mushroom risotto

If you have been following my blog for a while you may have noticed that I’m obsessed with mushrooms and carbs. So, unsurprisingly, I love mushroom risotto!!

Risotto is one of the common staple foods of Italian cuisine. It uses such a basic cooking method, but as most chefs know, the simpler the dish is, the harder to nail it perfectly – it’s not easy to cook a good risotto. What type of rice to use, how much water, how long you cook the rice, how much you stir – it all matters. Today, I want to share with you my classic mushroom risotto recipe and show you step-by-step how to make a tasty and creamy risotto from scratch.

To make a beautiful and tasty mushroom broth for risotto, dried porcini is a MUST. For fresh mushrooms, I use oyster, shiitake, king oyster and chestnut.

Soak the dried porcini mushrooms in 120 ml boiling hot water for 20 minutes.

Gently squeeze the mushrooms to make sure you get all the flavour out. Mix the mushroom liquid and vegetable stock together, stir well. (You may want to discard the last couple of spoonfuls of mushroom liquid if it’s looking too cloudy).

Heat the oil in a large, non-stick frying pan on a high heat, add the minced garlic and fry until golden. Add in the chopped onion, stir for another 5 minutes.

Add the chopped mixed mushrooms, stir, and cook for 4-5 minutes until the mushrooms soften.

I normally keep a few good looking pieces for decoration later on, but this is entirely optional.

Turn down to a medium heat and add the risotto rice, fresh thyme, and dried porcini mushrooms from the broth into the pan, pour over 70 ml of white wine, cook and stir until most of the alcohol has slowly evaporated.

For the risotto, it is very important that you only use short grain rice like Arborio rice because it is high in amylopectin starch, which is what gives the risotto its creamy texture. Unlike cooking sushi or long grain rice, we don’t wash or rinse the rice.

Pour in a quarter of the mushroom liquid and season with salt. Simmer the rice until the rice has absorbed all the liquid, stirring often.

Add about the same amount of stock again and continue to simmer and stir – the rice should start to become creamy and tender. By the time the final quarter of stock has added the rice nearly be ready.

Stir often until the rice is cooked al dente. It is well known that stirring helps give a risotto its creamy texture, but it’s important not to over stir. Over stirring is one way to quickly ruin a risotto’s texture. With the correct cooking temperature (a medium bubble), the rice is constantly moving on its own anyway, so you only need to stir continuously for the first 1-2 minutes when you add the broth at the beginning. Then just stir every 2-3 minutes to ensure the rice doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pot.

If the rice is still undercooked, add a splash of water. Take the pan off the heat, add 1 tablespoon of vegan butter, mix well.

Cover and let it rest for a few minutes, so the rice can take up any excess liquid as it cools a bit. Give the risotto a final stir, spoon into bowls and serve. (I put some nice pieces of mushroom I kept from before to may the dish prettier 😉)

This vegan mushroom risotto is super creamy and packed with flavour. It’s completely and utterly mouthwateringly delicious, can’t-stop-eating-it-good. If you love Italian food, you can check out my other Italian recipes too.

Let me know if you try out this recipe. You can leave a comment below, or take a picture and tag it with #k33_kitchen and share it on Instagram! I’d love to see what you come up with. Cheers, hope you enjoy my recipes!