Brown Rice Risotto

Difficulty: Easy

Prep time: 5 minutes

Cooking time: 1 hour but most of it is just watching and stirring

Cost per serving: $0.50 to $2.00 or more if you use fancy ingredients like expensive mushrooms

Useful leftovers: Very useful! Great reheated or used to thicken soup

This is a great recipe. It takes a long time but there is little work to do. Despite what TV cooks will tell you you don't need arborio or carnaroli rice. The texture of this risotto is surprisingly like the classic risotto but with a nuttier flavor and of course it's a lot better for you. Not only is it a whole grain dish I don't dump a half pound of cheese on it - but you could. My version is vegan but you could use chicken or beef stock instead of the mushroom stock, and you can add bits of cooked meat as a garnish.

This recipe takes over an hour to cook but after the first ten minutes you just have to stir and add liquid when needed, which is every few minutes.

The best rice for this is brown basmati rice. I love the nutty taste which really comes out in this dish. It's really versatile too; you can eat it as is, add nuts, cheese, bits of leftover meat, you can throw it in a soup or you can put it on a tray and refrigerate it, cut it into shapes and deep fry it.

1 onion, minced
1 tablespoon of olive oil
1 ounce dried mushrooms
2 cups of brown rice
1 clove of garlic, minced
Fresh or dried thyme
4 cups of hot water

Put the wild mushrooms in the hot water. Stir them up and push them down so they are all wet. Keep this stock on a low heat or keep it covered while you make the risotto. If it cools down heat it up again. You want the stock to be just below the boiling point while you add it to the rice over the course of an hour.

Saute the onions in the olive oil with the thyme until the onions are cooked but not browned. Add the rice and stir to coat the rice and cook for a couple of minutes. It should smell quite nutty.

Add enough mushroom stock to barely cover the rice and stir like mad. Leave the rice over really low heat and every few minutes stir it like mad. You don't want to be gentle, you want to put little holes in the rice.

When there is just a little liquid left in the rice add more to cover and stir like mad again.

If you start to run out of stock and the rice isn't cooked just add some more hot water to the mushrooms.

After 45 minutes or so you'll start to see a nice creamy quality to the liquid in the rice. When you see that and the rice is no longer hard the risotto is done.

Add salt and pepper (be generous as the rice is bland) and if they are tender add the mushrooms from the soaking liquid.

You can garnish the risotto with fresh herbs, cheese, bits of meat, water chestnuts, etc.