- [Male Announcer] This is a production of PBS Charlotte.

- [Female Announcer] The following episode of Charlotte Cooks is brought to you by Central Piedmont Community College and viewers like you.

Thank you.

- Coming up on this episode of Charlotte Cooks, we're going to demystify risotto.

(upbeat music) Welcome to this episode of Charlotte Cooks.

Today on the set, we have Chef Kelly Dopkeen with us.

She is actually a student here at Central Piedmont, but she also assists around town with different cooking classes, so you may encounter her around if you're going out to take a cooking class.

Kelly, welcome.

- Thank you.

- I'm glad you're here.

So Kelly and I today are going to make some risotto for you and we're gonna show you how to make a mushroom risotto and we're gonna show you how to make a risotto Milanese, which is basically a risotto made with saffron and white wine.

We use white wine in the mushroom risotto as well, but we're gonna show you how to make it so you know how to do it at home.

And the next thing we're gonna do is we're gonna make something called arancini.

Arancini are usually made out of leftover risotto, and we'll talk about that as we get going and making our risotto.

So the first thing we're gonna look at here is what kind of rice are you going to use when you choose to make risotto.

And it's very important that you choose a rice that has a very short grain.

And if you can see this, the grains are really short.

The short grain rice has more starch in it and it's gonna provide that beautiful creaminess that we are used to seeing in risotto.

And there's no cream in risotto, no cream whatsoever.

It all comes from the starch and you can see the difference in the grains between them.

You got the long grain, which is less starchy, and when the long grain rice cooks, it doesn't stick together.

But the short grain rice is very starchy and it will stick together when you cook it and that's what makes the creaminess in the risotto.

So you cannot make risotto with a long grain rice because you don't have that creaminess and you can't put cream in regular rice and call it risotto.

That's just not the way it works.

And this is actually a wild rice, and wild rice is a long grain but it's actually more of a grass seed than it is a rice.

But I wanted to show you the differences in the grains.

So if you're going out and you're looking for a rice to make risotto with, make sure you get the short, round, plump grains, all right?

So Kelly, let's get started on making some risotto.

Why don't you come - All right.

right on over here?

- Thank you.

- And we are gonna get started with some oil and some shallots, and since Kelly is making a mushroom risotto, she's gonna start with some chopped mushrooms.

Now, you can use any kind of mushroom now.

Look at all these mushrooms I got back here.

You can use chanterelles.

You can use oyster mushrooms.

You can use portobellos.

You can use the yellow oyster mushrooms.

They're really, really beautiful mushrooms.

So you just take them, you chop them up nice and fine, just like this, and this is what we're going to do to make our mushroom risotto.

To get started on making our risotto, the first thing we're gonna have to do is put a little oil in our pans.

So we're just gonna take just enough to coat the bottom of the pan.

Not a lot, just enough to coat the bottom.

We're not trying to deep fry here.

And then, Kelly, you wanna add your mushrooms?

- Thank you.

- And then I'm gonna add some shallots to mine, and then, yeah, there's that little sizzle.

And then here's some shallots for you, and I'm gonna add the garlic later.

I think we're both gonna add garlic later.

Now you've got shallots and mushrooms in yours.

- Yes.

- Add a little bit of salt and pepper to yours as well.

And I'm going to add to mine some saffron.

Now saffron is the stamen threads from a crocus flower and they have the tendency to turn things really, really, really bright yellow.

And the way you extract the color from this is not necessarily in water, but the color comes out better in fat.

So I'm gonna add this at the very beginning, a nice, hefty pinch, and the more you use, the more yellow it is and I'm just gonna use all of that.

Ha ha ha.

Lots of saffron in this.

How are you doing over there?

- Pretty good.

- Okay, yeah, that looks great.

What we're looking for here is just the onions to start getting a little bit translucent.

And as soon as they are translucent, it doesn't take very long for them to get there, we're each gonna add some arborio rice.

Now we each have this measured out to be one cup each.

- [Kelly] Thank you.

- After we get this sweated a little bit, we're gonna add the rice all at once and we're gonna stir it around to where all of the grains get coated with the oil that we put in here, coated with the fat.

Can you use pure butter in this?

Would you use butter in this, Kelly?

- If it was clarified.

- If it was clarified, yes, because why?

Higher temperature?

- [Kelly] Mm-hmm.

- Yeah, that would work out.

And so once this is done like this, guys, we have our shallots.

In mine, I have saffron and rice in here coated nicely with the fat, and you have your mushrooms and... - [Kelly] Shallots.

- Shallots, I think you need a little bit more fat in there.

- Okay.

Let's do a little bit more oil.

There you go.

- [Kelly] Thank you.

Stir that up.

Get it nice and shiny.

And the next thing we're gonna do is start adding our stock.

Now we have over here some chicken stock.

You can use vegetable stock.

I would not use beef stock on this, and we're gonna add our stock in different phases now, about three different phases.

So I'm gonna add couple of spoonfuls.

Now this is a two-ounce ladle, so I'm going to add about six ounces, maybe eight ounces.

Let me bring this over here.

Get this going a little bit faster.

All right, now stir like a fiend.

So this is where everybody sorta falls down on risotto.

When you get your first phase of stock in here, this is part of the creamy release basically.

All we are trying to do here is start developing the starch that is in the rice.

We are gonna stir it and stir it and stir it.

It's gonna come back to a boil, and it's the stirring that creates the risotto magic.

Do you know anything about where risotto came from?

- So risotto actually comes from northern Italy and arborio is one of the most common rices that you use.

There are a few others, but as long as you're getting that rice with a high starch, you're gonna be good.

- If you were into doing the local food thing, you can find a local rice, but whatever rice you choose, you wanna make sure you get that short, fat, plump grain because that's what's gonna give you the starch.

So you can make a lot of different kinds of risotto.

What's your favorite?

- I like the barley risotto.

- You like barley risotto?

- I do, yeah.

- Yeah, now that you mention barley risotto, you don't have to have rice to make risotto.

You can use, it is a technique for cooking rice.

So there's actually three techniques for cooking rice.

There's a simmer technique, which is very similar to what you do with a rice maker.

So we're just gonna stand here and talk to you while we stir 'cause really it's just a stirfest.

When you do a simmer technique, you basically bring the water to a boil and you put your rice in.

You put a lid on it and you let it simmer for 20 minutes.

And there's another method called a pilaf method where, pretty much like we just started here, you saute some onions and if you wanna use other things in there, you can.

You put your rice in there and get it coated with fat and then you put your stock in and then put it in the oven and finish it in the oven.

If you mess up your rice on the top of the stove a lot, that's a good way of finishing your rice and making sure that you're gonna get successful rice.

Or if you really like that simmer method, go buy yourself a rice cooker.

I'm ready for another addition of stock, so I'm gonna bring this over here.

And always, guys, if you leave your ladles in the stockpot, be careful because they could be hot when you pick them up.

So I'm gonna add another bunch of stock just to make sure I have enough.

Now remember, your typical ratio for cooking rice is two to one.

Now we're not gonna worry about that so much for risotto because we're gonna just keep cooking it like this.

We're gonna cover it.

See how it's covered now with the liquid?

So between each phase of your risotto making, you're going to add stock, get it down to its dry, add another layer and stock, another layer.

And then towards the end, after you do that three times, you're gonna taste it.

Now your rice should be almost completely cooked by then and if it is completely cooked, then the last phase you use instead of stock, we're gonna use a little white wine.

We're gonna finish it with some whole butter and some dynamite Parmesan cheese.

And if you wanted to add garlic to your risotto, you can, and I would not add the garlic early on because garlic can have a tendency to burn.

And so, especially when you're doing your initial saute.

And so anytime after your first phase, you can add some garlic in there, but you wanna add it so it has plenty of time to cook.

So once again, we're just gonna continue stir, stir, stir.

So when you go out to a restaurant and you get risotto, and I remember the first time when I heard about risotto, I was like, "You guys really eat that for an entree?"

And it is.

Yeah, when I had it, I totally understood it.

I was like, "Rice for dinner?

That's it?"

And then when I had a bowl of risotto, it was like, "Wow, this is really special stuff, really special stuff."

And so once I got that done, I heard about something called arancini.

Do you know what arancini are?

- Ah, those beautiful fried rice balls?

- Yes, they are!

And the thing about risotto is when you make risotto, you gotta make it and you gotta eat it pretty much right away because it turns into something like wallpaper paste and it's because of all the starches.

When they start cooling down, they get kinda sticky and gooey and it's just really not very nice to eat.

But there is a dish, and Kelly just mentioned fried risotto balls, oh my goodness.

They are so good.

And so we have what we call an urban legend about arancini.

And it's really kinda funny because arancini's made out of leftover risotto, but if there's never any leftover risotto, is there any arancini?

So does arancini really exist if it's made out of something that doesn't exist to begin with?

So what we're going to do is make a batch of risotto just for arancini.

So when we do this, you can take your rice.

Now the thing about risotto, guys, I'm talking about three phases and possibly the fourth phase with the wine and the cheese to end it, you can hold the risotto after phase two and finish later on if you have to hold it because you really do.

You have to serve it right away, right?

- [Kelly] Mm-hmm.

- Have you ever had old risotto?

- Oh, no, I wouldn't.

(Kelly laughs) - Yeah, right, right?

Nope, nope.

You do it, you do it right the first time.

I'm almost ready for another phase here but I want that to get a little bit drier and you could see the creaminess starting to happen in the rice, too.

It's really starting to come together.

How's yours doing, Kelly?

Look at mine.

Look at mine.

Look at how yellow mine is.

- [Kelly] Oh, from the saffron.

- Isn't that gorgeous?

Look at how bright yellow that is.

- [Kelly] That color came out nice now.

- I'm ready for more stock.

You're ready for more stock.

- [Kelly] Yeah.

I'm gonna actually end this.

I'm not gonna finish it all the way 'cause I'm gonna get on to making these legendary arancinis while you finish yours 'cause you're gonna finish up yours and serve yours right up, right?

- [Kelly] Yes, ma'am.

- And so if I wanted to hold this, I would, once again, finish this and then stop it and then I would finish it with the wine and the butter and the cheese later.

And we're gonna show you how to finish this.

When she gets to her finishing stages, we're gonna show you how to finish this.

But right now I'm gonna show you how to make some arancini.

You can make it out of any kind of risotto.

You see on the back table here, we have some butternut squash.

You can actually use butternut squash to make a risotto.

You can just put it in at the same time you're doing your mushrooms.

You mentioned barley.

- Yes.

Okay, do this same technique using whole barley, whatever kind of barley you want, same method.

So risotto is actually a dish.

- Mm-hmm.

- And risotto is actually a method as well.

And the method is the three additions of stock at three different times, finishing it with cheese and butter and that is actually the method, and you use that with barley and farro works really good with that.

And it's another way of having a really nice grain, just beautiful.

So now this is nice and thick, we can take this and taste it and see how dense it is.

The rice should be three-quarters of the way cooked.

You don't wanna cook this down to where it's completely mushy.

We're not making rice pudding.

So you want the grains to still be defined.

We don't want them to totally break down, but we do want the rice to be cooked.

Right?

- Yes, you want it to have that contrast between the creaminess from the starch and your nice al dente rice.

- Exactly, exactly.

Good way to put it, Kelly.

Good way.

All right, so this is at the end of stage two.

It's ready for stage three.

It's got that beautiful yellow color to it, but we're gonna have to move on ahead and start making, all the smoke in our way, the steam.

We're gonna have to move on and start making our arancini.

So I'm just gonna put this on the side and basically I'm gonna be holding it.

Just put that on the side and I can come back and finish that later.

So in order to make our arancini, we have to have our leftover risotto and the...

This has to be cooled down, guys.

It has to be cooled down because we're gonna roll it in our hands.

And you're not gonna roll in your hands with hot rice, but we're also gonna need something called a standard breading procedure.

And the standard breading procedure is flour, egg wash, and bread crumbs.

Now these bread crumbs can be anything you want to.

You can use nuts.

You can use ground up potato chips.

You can use corn flakes.

But right now, what I am using in here is panko, and panko is a nice, crispy, crispy, crispy bread crumb.

It's a bigger flake than a regular bread crumb flake, but it works really, really well.

So, how you doing?

- Pretty good.

Need a little more stock here.

- So what I'm going to do is I'm gonna start making some risotto balls and catch up with Kelly.

So Kelly, you've been coming to school here for how long?

- About six months now.

- Six months, wow.

- Yes, I started, well, seven months.

- How do you like it?

- I love it.

- Do you?

- I did look at a few different schools before I made my decision.

- And what made you decide Central Piedmont?

- I liked the idea that it was a community college.

It was very involved with the Charlotte community and it gives you a lot of opportunity to network, meet with other chefs around town.

- Well, that is something we always like to do for you guys is try and put you in touch with people that are in the industry as possible.

So yeah, I'm really glad you're here with me today.

- Oh, thank you!

- Yeah, it's really fun.

So basically to make these arancini balls, all I'm doing is I'm taking the cooked risotto and I'm just giving it a gentle squeeze, just squeezing it together into a little ball.

It is gonna be sticky, it is gonna be gooey, but that's risotto.

Now that we have these done like this, I've got some oil here and I've got my oil hot and my oil needs to be at about 350 degrees.

You don't want it to be screaming hot.

You want it to be warm enough to get the rice just warmed to the inside and golden brown on the outside.

So the way you're gonna test your temperature on the oil at home, you can use a thermometer, but I bet you most of you don't have a thermometer that goes high enough up to test oil temps so use a clean, dry wooden spoon and it needs to be dry.

So you want to just take that and put that into the oil and when you see bubbles coming out of the end of the spoon, that means your food's gonna be ready to cook.

So these bubbles are coming out.

Another way to do it is to throw a couple of bread crumbs in there and you see the bread crumbs starting to cook, so we're ready to go.

So I'm gonna take my little risotto balls over here, do flour, egg wash, and then the bread crumbs.

So just a light coating of each.

Now you don't wanna take these things and just roll them around.

You gotta be kinda delicate with them because the rice balls could fall apart on you just because it's just being held by a bunch of little starch.

So you just gotta be a little delicate with them.

Get them into the egg wash and you're just gonna roll these around in the egg wash to get them nice and coated and then you're gonna take them out of the egg wash.

So now you put them into the bread crumbs, shake it back and forth to get them all nice and evenly coated.

I'm gonna drop them into the oil and they aren't gonna take very long to cook it all.

Now you can drop them in, there we go, (oil sizzling) and needs to have action happening as soon as you drop these things in.

If it's not acting when you drop them in, your oil is not hot enough, so stop and get your oil hot.

How's it going, Kelly?

- I'm gonna be ready to add the finishing touches any minute.

- Awesome!

And these are gonna be done in just a minute, too.

All right, now here's something I didn't tell y'all about.

Inside of the little rice ball, if you wanted to, put a little chunk of cheese, like a little bit of Fontina cheese or some kind of a lovely, lovely cheese that gets all melty and delicious, and when you bite into that arancini, you just get that cheesy, cheesy bite.

Ah, it is awesome.

It is really a lovely way to do an arancini.

So now, they're just getting nice and golden brown and you're gonna let them cook 'cause the rice is already cooked but all we're doing is looking for that golden brown.

I wanna see how you're doing.

Oh, that looks gorgeous!

So you think you're ready for the end?

- I think we're ready to put on our finishing touches.

- Okay, so the finishing touches on this for this risotto is hit it with the white wine, a little bit of whole butter, and then some Parmesan cheese and the Parmesan cheese we're using is Parmesan-Reggiano, which is like the king of Parmesan cheeses.

Yeah, can't go wrong with that.

So you add your wine just like you do your stock.

So what are you gonna garnish that with today?

- [Kelly] Today, we have some parsley and some chives.

- Parsley, chives, and what about some mushrooms?

(voices overlapping) So what else could you put in risotto, Kelly?

Give us some ideas.

- Once you have this method down, your options are really limitless.

You can switch up and experiment with your aromatics.

You can switch up your stock from chicken stock, fish stock.

You can even go vegetarian and do a vegetarian stock.

You can add or top it with any type of meat that you want to if you have it all ready to go and don't have to cook it at the same time.

- Right.

I've seen a lot of people put some shrimp on these things, too.

- Yes!

- And it's really delicious.

You just put a cup, you don't put it in the risotto.

You put it on top - On top.

of the risotto when it's all done.

In fact, you could, there's so many things you can put on top of it.

It's just really quite amazing.

So when you pull them out of the fat, you wanna go ahead and use a slotted spoon.

And I like putting them on a screen with a parchment-lined sheet pan underneath because that means that even if sometimes you, when you make fry food and you put them on a paper towel, sometimes they kind of stick to that paper towel.

Have you ever had that happen?

- [Kelly] Mm-hmm.

- [Pamela] Yeah, so that's why I like using a screen.

- So now I'm gonna add our lovely, freshly-grated Parmesan.

Yes.

- There's nothing like freshly-grated Parmesan.

It tastes so much better than the shredded stuff you buy in the bags.

It's just fresh.

It's nice.

So with your arancini, you could serve them with a lot of different sauces, too.

Really typical one is a marinara sauce and that's what we're gonna serve with these today.

Every now and then you'll go to a place and they'll have arancini and they'll be big ones, really big ones.

But I like these little bite-sized balls 'cause they're just perfect for snacking.

(Pamela laughs) - Are you ready for me to plate?

- How are you doing there?

Are you ready to plate?

- Yes.

- All right, so I've finished with my arancini.

I've got them all draining.

So the risotto, you just scoop it into a bowl and give yourself a generous bowl because you're gonna like this stuff.

This is so good.

And then put a nice little garnish on top.

I believe we've got some sauteed mushrooms, don't we?

- Yes, we do.

- Got sauteed mushrooms.

And you want a little basil or a little chopped herb to go on top of there?

- [Kelly] That'd be great.

- We've got some.

We've got parsley and basil and chives, some pretty green things.

You're gonna use the chives.

Good.

- Yes.

- And you know what, one more thing?

I'm gonna add - Some Parmesan.

a little bit of Parmesan, yes.

Just a little bit, just a little snow sprinkling.

Oh, look at that.

So here, look at that.

That's gorgeous, isn't it?

Here's mushroom risotto.

Now for the arancini.

We're gonna put them on a tray.

We are going to pick them up and put them on a dish with some marinara sauce and there you go.

Use them as an appetizer.

Use them as a treat that people are not gonna believe the first time they bite into them.

And they're gonna say, "What is this?"

And you tell them it's arancini.

And they go, "What's an arancini?"

And you tell them it's leftover risotto and they'll go, "There is no such thing."

And you say, "Well, we have a miracle here."

So thank you for watching this episode of Charlotte Cooks and if you wanna grab these recipes from us, send me an email at Pamela, P-A-M-E-L-A, .roberts, R-O-B-E-R-T-S, @cpcc.edu or get them off our website, which is pbscharlotte.org, and we will catch you next time on Charlotte Cooks.

Thanks for watching.

Kelly, thanks for being here.

It's been fun.

- Thank you for having me.

Yeah.

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