Risotto is much easier to make than most people think. This Tomato and Parmesan Risotto is absolutely delicious and in 30 minutes you'll have a meal for yourself and the whole family.
We've modified an original recipe from Bon Appetit.
Prep, Cook, Servings
Prep: 10 min. Cook: 30 min.
Servings: 4
Ingredients
6 cups low-sodium vegetable broth
2 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for drizzling
1 medium onion, finely chopped
6 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1 Tbsp. tomato paste
2 cups cherry tomatoes
1 cup arborio rice
Kosher salt
1/2 cup dry white wine
2 Tbsp. unsalted butter
1 - 1/2 cups Parmesan grated cheese. (or more to taste)
Freshly ground black pepper
Instructions (full transcript from the video is below the Notes section)
Bring broth to a simmer in a medium saucepan; keep warm over medium heat. You never want to add cold broth to the risotto.
In a large saucepan, heat 2 Tbsp. oil in over medium. Add onion and cook, stirring often, until golden 8–10 minutes.
Add garlic and cook, stirring, until softened, about 1 minute.
Add tomato paste and cook, stirring often, until it darkens slightly about 2 minutes.
Add tomatoes and cook, stirring occasionally, until some of the tomatoes begin to burst, about 2 minutes.
Stir in rice; season with salt, and reduce heat to medium-low. Cook, stirring, until some grains are translucent, about 3 minutes.
Add dry white wine. Cook until the liquid is absorbed, about 2 - 5 minutes.
Ladle in about 2 cups broth and simmer, stirring frequently, until completely absorbed, 8–10 minutes.
Add 2 more ladles of broth and repeat the process.
Add 1 ladle at a time and keep repeating until the rice is well cooked on the outside, yet still has a little firmness in the middle. Not crunchy, just firm. Italians call this al dente. It should take about 15 - 25 minutes from the time you started adding broth.
Add 1 more ladle of broth, butter, and at least 1 cup of parmesan, Cook about 4 - 5 minutes to allow the broth to cook down a little and the risotto looks creamy.
Salt and Pepper to taste.
Serve with grated cheese. You can also add torn basil leaves, shaved parmesan, fresh tomato slices.
Notes
The pan we're using in the video is the Scan Pan 4qt Deep Saute Pan.
Full Transcript. Apologies in advance for typos.
Walter 0:00
Hey, folks, I'm Walter.
Rebecca 0:01
And I'm Rebecca.
Walter 0:02
And we're gonna make some tomato and parmesan risotto.
Walter 0:14
I know risotto seemed to be like very, very scary, but Rebecca it's actually really easy to make, right?
Rebecca 0:18
Yeah, takes some time and effort, but it's easy.
Walter 0:22
It's actually really really easy. Just takes a little time. Risotto sounds scary cuz it's like one of those big restaurant things right? Yeah, so this recipe is actually from Bon Appetit. One of our favorite magazine. So what do we got Rebecca? What do we got for ingredients?
Rebecca 0:37
We have olive oil, onions, garlic. The best thing ever, tomato paste in a tube.
Walter 0:46
Tomato paste in a tube. Why is that so exciting?
Rebecca 0:49
Because otherwise you get those little six ounce or four ounce whatever they are cans and you end up with like, half a can and it goes bad. This stays good longer.
Walter 1:00
Stays good for a long time. Yes, it does. Okay. What else?
Rebecca 1:04
Arborio rice.
Walter 1:05
Arborio rice. So that's a special kind of rice. You don't actually cook it in water per se you cook it in, you know, whatever it is you're making. Go ahead.
Rebecca 1:14
Tomatoes.
Walter 1:14
Cherry tomatoes.
Rebecca 1:16
What else? Oh, there's cheese and butter.
Walter 1:19
Cheese and butter. Everything is good with cheese and butter.
Rebecca 1:21
And although the recipe doesn't call for it, I'm going to use some white wine.
Walter 1:26
White wine. Okay,
Rebecca 1:28
And broth. I'm using vegetable broth, but you can use whatever you want.
Walter 1:32
All right. What are we doing? What are we doing? How do we make this?
Rebecca 1:34
First off, you get the broth warm.
Walter 1:36
Okay, get the broth warm.
Rebecca 1:37
You want to get it kind of simmering.
Walter 1:39
Back there broth simmering. All right.
Rebecca 1:41
Then we'll put some olive oil in the pan.
Walter 1:45
Olive oil in the pan. Okay.
Rebecca 1:47
So then we add the onion.
Walter 1:49
Add the onion. Ooo, listen to that.
Rebecca 1:57
And we're supposed to cook this over medium until it's golden and very soft. Our stove runs a little hot so I'm doing it slightly under medium.
Walter 2:06
Yeah so this will take about 5, 10 minutes.
Rebecca 2:10
They say eight to 10.
Walter 2:11
Yeah so think about eight to 10, we'll check back in a minute. Rebecca, noticing that it's a beautiful cut on those onions. Look at this.
Rebecca 2:22
Finely chopped and for me, this is about as finely chopped as I get.
Walter 2:26
Sorry about that. You were looking at it and then it went foggy. So we're looking for a light golden. It's getting there and you know, like golden is relative to it also depends on how hungry you are. If you're really really hungry, that's good. That's like golden. If you can wait a little longer, then it can be you know, a little bit more of a golden. So general rule of cooking. The more hungry year hungry you are, the faster you're going to cook.
Rebecca 2:51
The next thing to go in will be the garlic, and we have a general rule of thumb whatever a recipe, amount of garlic, a recipe calls for, as long as it's getting cooked, we double it.
Walter 3:02
Hmm.
Rebecca 3:03
We learned the hard way making, I believe it was hummus.
Walter 3:06
Hmm.
Rebecca 3:06
Not to do that on uncooked garlic, however.
Walter 3:09
No, there is such a thing as too much garlic when it's raw. When it's cooked however, no such thing. Sorry, if you have a problem with garlic, you will not do well in this household. Trying to direct my wife to tell her to dump the food towards the camera rather than away because you know, we're both right handed and of course I put the camera on the right side because that's where all the light's coming from. Kind of pour the food in from this side.
Rebecca 3:34
I'm super right handed girl.
Walter 3:36
Yeah, we're both super right handed.
Rebecca 3:38
One tablespoon of tomato paste. There, that's about a tablespoon.
Walter 3:45
About a tablespoon.
Rebecca 3:46
Again, I didn't really measure, but...
Walter 3:49
You know you really don't. I mean, in baking, you really got to measure but when you're cooking, not so much, not so much. You can have a little fun winging it a little bit more.
Rebecca 4:00
Basically we're just cooking this till the tomato paste darkens a little bit. Now we add in the
Rebecca 4:10
Tomatoes. This is what you get for trying to get me to do things left handed.
Walter 4:13
My wife knocks everything over.
Rebecca 4:16
His fault dish left handed
Walter 4:21
Our first bleep.
Rebecca 4:23
And also the recipe calls for some nutmeg, but I don't particularly like it in savory recipes, so I'm not adding it.
Walter 4:32
Another rule when you're cooking for yourself, if you don't like an ingredient, don't put it in there. All right.
Rebecca 4:38
I'm basically cooking these until some of the tomatoes start to burst.
Walter 4:43
Some of the tomato start to burst,so are these, are these grapes are these cherry?
Rebecca 4:48
Heavenly salad tomatoes.
Walter 4:51
There's cherub. Cherub, heavenly salad tomatoes. Ah, you can just smell the sweetness coming off of them.
Rebecca 5:00
The recipe calls for cherry, but this is what the grocery store had.
Walter 5:06
Right? And again, you know, if you go to the grocery store and they don't have that exact thing, very often you can find substitutes. There's a lot of websites out there and apps that'll actually tell you, we just put in the item, it'll give you a suggested substitute.
Rebecca 5:20
Personally, I want about half of them to be at least slightly burst.
Walter 5:24
There you go, at least slightly burst. Mostly burst. If they were all burst you'd be in trouble but since they're just mostly burst, let me have a look. Okay, what's next?
Rebecca 5:35
Rice, one cup of rice.
Walter 5:38
One cup of rice literally just dumped it right in there. It's not like your, your, you know your white rice, your jasmine rice, your brown rice where you go ahead and boil it up in water. The Arborio rice just goes right into the dish, and then we're going to add water to it. How much salt was that Rebecca?
Rebecca 5:56
A bit.
Walter 5:58
A bit. These are pretty cool. These are again, we also got these at Sur La Table. You just crank the little handle. So it's got the salt inside. These are awesome salt shakers. We've had them for a while. Yeah, here's the pepper
Rebecca 6:11
Sur La Table has their own brands ...
Walter 6:13
Yeah,
Rebecca 6:14
These now.
Walter 6:15
This is...
Rebecca 6:15
Kuhn Rikon
Walter 6:17
Kuhn Rikon, really nice. They work really well. And you don't I mean, we've had these for a couple of years now. Awesome. So just stiring the rice right in with the tomatoes. No, no liquid has been added yet. And then what we're going to do is just slowly add the liquid in. And then it's just add liquid, stir, let it absorb, add liquid, stir, let it absorb. It's just a process that takes time, but there's nothing really scary about making risotto.
Rebecca 6:44
And here's the wine it didn't call for.
Walter 6:49
Now, why are you adding the wine?
Rebecca 6:51
Because most risotto recipes do call for wine and I like the flavor. So basically Just stir this until pretty much most of the wine is absorbed. Okay, that looks to be pretty absorbed.
Walter 7:08
Absorbed, here she goes, she's going to do with the right hand because you she can't do it with the left.
Rebecca 7:12
No, I can't.
Walter 7:13
But you see, so she just put two ladles of the liquid in there, the broth, that's a vegetable broth. So basically, you're gonna cook the liquid almost completely away to almost dry. You'll be able to move the spatula and actually see a little bit of a dry spot on the pan and then that that's when you go ahead and add two more ladles.
Rebecca 7:31
If you push this aside, you can kind of see there really isn't a lot of liquid that fills in the space. So, I'm going to add some more.
Walter 7:40
There you go. So that was the first ladle through, now she's adding a little more liquid, and that that's what you're looking for each time.
Rebecca 7:48
Probably after this one, I'll just do one ladle at a time.
Walter 7:52
So this is the second addition of the liquid. Starting with the third addition, she'll start doing one ladle at a time. So we've used about half of the liquid that was in the pan, plus that half a cup of wine.
Walter 8:09
And so we did 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and now six ladles. And it's definitely starting to thicken up, it's not taking quite as much liquid as it did before. So as you pour this in, the rice is just absorbing the liquid in.
Rebecca 8:24
And you don't need to start constantly, but you do need to stir frequently.
Walter 8:28
Yes. Now the difference between frequently and constantly Rebecca, what would that be?
Rebecca 8:36
Constantly is not stopping.
Walter 8:39
Yeah, yeah. So How often would be frequently?
Rebecca 8:43
Less often than constantly.
Walter 8:48
So, stir it frequently.
Rebecca 8:54
You want to taste?
Walter 8:55
Oh, sure. Mmm.
Walter 9:03
Firm yet satisfying. It's a little bit, it's still a little crunchy, a little crunchy on the inside. The thing about the risotto, you don't want it completely mushy. You want it to have a little bit of a bite to it. Italians call it al'dente. We want to have a little bit of a bite in there. Not necessarily a crunch, but I'm a little resistance when you eat it. Smells so good. You, see how easy this is you can make this at home easily.
Walter 9:33
I heard that you can make this easily.
Walter 9:37
Taking over. She's taking over. She doesn't try. I think I was stirring constantly. I wasn't stirring frequently. That was my problem.
Rebecca 9:45
This is just so you have time to
Walter 9:48
To do what? Play with my friends? Hi. I'm glad y'all are enjoying Where's Walter. This is a lot of fun for me. It's funny. I produce all these things for other people. Rarely do things for myself. So this is fun. Thanks for joining. That was ladle eight. That was ladle number eight, I believe. It smells so good. So we've got let's see. So we got rice. We got tomatoes. We got garlic,
Rebecca 10:15
Onion.
Walter 10:16
Onion,
Rebecca 10:16
Olive oil.
Walter 10:17
Olive oil, tomatoes,
Rebecca 10:18
Salt.
Walter 10:19
Salt. No pepper yet.
Rebecca 10:21
Broth.
Walter 10:21
Oh, yeah, the veggie broth.
Rebecca 10:23
Wait wine. Did we mention wine?
Walter 10:24
Yes. The white wine. And we still got butter and cheese to come.
Rebecca 10:39
Might be there
Walter 10:39
Might be there. Mmm! Oh, that's absolutely perfect. Absolutely perfect. It's soft but it's got a little bit of a resistance in the middle. Spot on. Perfect, ladies and gentlemen. Oh, look what she's doing now. Not very gracefully, adding butter.
Walter 10:59
Oh yeah, this is when it gets real good look at this. Look at this. How much cheese is that, Hon?
Rebecca 11:03
Uh...
Walter 11:04
Mmm, that much. Looking at that, oh, look at how beautiful that is. Now, folks risotto in about 30 minutes. You know, you can't call and order a pizza in 30 minutes, but you can make a risotto in about 30 minutes.
Rebecca 11:16
Just to give a little sauciness.
Walter 11:19
A little sauciness, she says. That was ladle number nine. So even though we had the perfect cook on the risotto, she just wants to make it a just a you know, a little bit more liquidy in the broth. Look how absolutely beautiful that is.
Rebecca 11:33
Cook it for four or five minutes.
Walter 11:36
Four or five minutes, just a little, a little bit of that liquid cooked down.
Rebecca 11:39
And then taste it, see if we need salt and pepper.
Walter 11:42
Look at that. And look how pretty that is. Right. Huh? So we've got, we've got the risotto, we've got a little bit of just torn basil on there. Now depending on what you like, you know, maybe you want to have a little Sriracha on there, add a little bit of heat to it. You could add a little hot sauce to it. You can add some chili flakes to it, like Rebecca. She's getting some chili flakes right now. Yeah crushed red pepper. But there you go. That is tomato and cheese risotto.
Rebecca 12:11
And more cheese.
Walter 12:11
And more cheese. Molly the Wonder dog. Molly come here. She is 13 years old and she has been cleaning our floors for all those 13 years. She's not as good as she used to be. She's a little slower now. Her eyesight's not there. But go to your local shelter.
Rebecca 12:29
Labrador Friends of the South.