The third and final recipe of my first Home Chef box was truffled mushroom risotto with truffle oil, chives, and white wine. Look at the beautiful recipe card:
The only thing I knew about risotto was that it's probably one of the most complicated dishes ever because it seems like everyone on Hell's Kitchen messes it up. Am I right? Given that, I wondered how someone like me was going to pull it off.
The Contents:
Ingredients: butter, wild mushrooms, parsley, peppercorns, truffle oil, chives, white cooking wine, arborio rice, shallot, and a vegetable bouillon cube
As usual, the first step was to prepare the veggies. Slice the mushrooms, chop the parsley and chives, dice the shallot, and crush the peppercorns. The peppercorns came already crushed-ish. I didn't feel like I made any difference by crushing them further with a spoon. But hey, who knows?
The next step was to prepare the broth by dissolving the bouillon cube in water. I saved you a picture on that step. It wasn't that riveting, I promise.
Next, saute the mushrooms, then add them to the broth:
Next, the onions were cooked in the skillet with some oil. Shortly after, the dry rice was added and cooked for two minutes.
The next step was the most intensive. To actually make the risotto, 1/2 cup of broth (sans mushrooms) was added to the rice and stirred constantly until fully absorbed. Once absorbed, another 1/2 cup was added, and so on. This process was repeated for 20 minutes while stirring constantly:
At 20 minutes in, the risotto was supposed to be chewy. Mine still tasted a little raw, but I was pretty much out of mushroom broth. I cooked/stirred for five minutes more and decided to call it done. To finish up the risotto, any remaining broth, mushrooms, butter, half the chives, and some peppercorns were added:
The Final Product:
During plating, a "luxurious drizzle" of truffle oil is added.
The Verdict:
Excellent idea, poor execution on my part. I followed the directions exactly as written, so I don't know why my rice wasn't done. I tried Googling some risotto discussion and read that the constant stirring maybe isn't as important as the recipe said it was. Maybe my constant stirring kept it from cooking as well as it should have? Who knows!
This dish was mushroom overload. I think I would have loved it if it was chewier. My husband thought it was okay, but to be fair, this dish was all my pick. I had a feeling he wouldn't be won over.
This was our last Home Chef recipe. All in all, it was a wonderful box! Check out my next post for a Home Chef recap.
If you are interested in trying out Home Chef, click here to receive $30 off of your first box!
