Risotto: Gourmet Comfort Food (Restaurants USA, April 2001)

April 2001 issue

Risotto: Gourmet Comfort Food

Restaurants USA magazine's final issue was published in September 2002 but these archived articles remain available for our readers' convenience.

Restaurants USA, April 2001

Risotto, a creamy Italian rice dish, has made its way onto many restaurant menus in recent years.
By Beth Panitz

It's the classic Italian comfort food. With its creamy, velvety texture, risotto is to rice what mashed potatoes are to the common spud. The dish, made with rice simmered in broth, can be flavored with anything from cheeses to meats to vegetables to satisfy any set of taste buds.

Risotto preparation requires intense attention to detail — if the timing is off or if the incorrect rice is used, the result can be a tasteless mush. When prepared correctly, the dish is elegant and upscale while being comforting and nourishing, says Kim Park, director of consumer education for the Houston-based USA Rice Federation. "It just makes you feel good after you eat it," she says.

Executive Chef Bart Hosmer of Chicago's Molive restaurant agrees. "There’s something about the creamy rice dish. It's comforting to me," says Hosmer, who regularly features risotto on the menu of his American-style bistro.

Risotto, which means "little rice" in Italian, is believed to have gained popularity in 19th-century Northern Italy. The region’s Po River Valley produces short-grain, starchy rices — such as arborio rice — that are perfect for risotto. Each grain has a translucent, starchy shell and hard, opaque inner core. When cooked properly, the starchy shell dissolves, creating a creamy sauce and chewy kernels.

Although other Italian dishes, such as pastas and pizzas, have long been favorites on American menus, risotto has not received much attention until recently. American interest in risotto started to build in the mid-1980s, says Park. "And it seems to have boomed in popularity in the last several years," she says. "The popularity of risotto is just incredible. . . . It's really hot now. . . . People are more familiar with risotto, and it's now on the menu of more restaurants."

Risotto accounts for 20 percent of pasta and risotto sales at Chicago's Coco Pazzo restaurant, according to Executive Chef Tony Priolo. And in New York City, a quickservice restaurant specializing in risotto — called Risotteria — opened in fall 2000. Chef Christian Delouvrier of New York City’s upscale Lespinasse restaurant, notes that risotto is getting "more known and more appreciated." In short, Americans are falling in love with the soothing and nourishing taste of risotto.

Season-ing risotto

New York City's Risotteria is the Baskin-Robbins of risotto. The restaurant features 45 varieties of risotto — everything from "Alla Bolognese" (roasted meat ragu) to "Zucchini, Oven-Dried Tomato, Parsley and Fontina." Chef/owner Joseph Pace boasts that he can have a risotto dish ready in 5 minutes or less from the time that it's ordered. It might take customers longer than that just to peruse the restaurant's extensive menu.

"There are so many different ways you can go with risotto," says Park. "The fun of it for the chefs is that it allows them to be creative. There are so many different things you can put in risotto, and you can make different ethnic preparations. I've even seen Cajun crawfish risotto."

Traditionally served in a bowl by itself as an appetizer or "primi" course, risotto now appears on restaurant menus also as a main course, side dish or even dessert, says Park. It's also available at some eateries any time of the day, she says, noting that one of her favorite risottos is a breakfast dish featuring strawberries and raspberries.

Risotto's versatility lends itself to special promotional menus that highlight different varieties of the comforting dish. For example, New York City's San Domenico restaurant hosted a Risotto Festival from September 11 to October 11, 2000. The special menu featured 12 risotto varieties, including "Pears and Gorgonzola Cheese," "Salt-Cod and Prunes" and "Chicken, Black Olives and Peppers."

Risotto also took center stage at CaliTerra restaurant in Boston from January 16 to February 15, 2000. During this time, the restaurant's special risotto menu featured everything from "Risotto Milanese," a traditional saffron risotto finished with freshly grated Parmesan and butter, to "Baked Maine Lobster" filled with shellfish risotto. The risotto-inspired menu let customers build an entire meal based on the dish — starting with a brodo, or broth with arborio rice, and finishing on a sweet note with "Chilled Arborio Rice Pudding." "Risotto is very versatile," says Executive Sous Chef David Ulrich. "You can do anything with it."

Risotto's versatility makes it perfect for any season. "One of the beauties of risotto is that it's so great throughout the year," says Molive's Hosmer. "It's so versatile that it just lends itself to any of the dishes that you might create."

In the springtime, risotto might feature fresh peas and prosciutto, asparagus and herbs, or morel mushrooms. Come summer, risotto can highlight the season's produce with squash blossoms and zucchini, peaches, or tomatoes and basil. Autumn risottos might feature duck ragout, chanterelle mushrooms or butternut squash. As winter weather sets in, heartier, festive risottos tend to appear on menus — such as meat ragout, Italian sausage and white truffle.

Risotto varieties can make festive occasions even more special. For example, CaliTerra offers "Roasted Quail With Pumpkin Risotto" around Halloween and "Chestnut Risotto With Braised Goose and Foie Gras Butter" at Christmastime. Patrick Aasen, chef/owner of Arturo's Italian Restaurant in Indianapolis, dresses up special dinners with "Champagne Risotto."

Risotto also can take on any color of the rainbow, adding to its versatility, says Ulrich. Add beet puree for a beautiful, red dish, saffron to create yellow risotto or blanched opal basil for a purplish hue, he says. Hosmer uses blanched and pureed spinach to color risotto green, pumpkin to cast an orange hue and calamari squid ink to create a "stunning black."

The possibilities for flavoring risotto are limitless, says Delouvrier, but he suggests adhering to a few guidelines. Add only small items, preferably not much bigger than the grains of rice, he says. And be sure to precook vegetables, stirring them into the risotto near the end of the cooking process.

Raving about risotto

The perfect risotto is "really creamy, wet, with a lot of flavor," says Risotteria's Pace. What's the secret to producing a successful risotto? According to the USA Rice Federation, the correct type of rice, a gradual absorption of liquid and frequent stirring contribute to risotto's remarkable saucelike consistency.

For starters, risotto requires rice classified as medium grain in the United States or short grain in Italy. Such rice has a high level of amylopectin, a starch that breaks down as the rice is cooked, creating a creamy texture. This type of rice also has an exceptional ability to absorb flavors.

The rice usually is combined with soffrito — a mixture of sauteed vegetables, such as leeks and onions — and then often is deglazed with wine. Then it's time to add the broth. "Using a good stock is important," says Arturo's Aasen. "Each little kernel of rice is like a hard sponge. You don't want [the stock] to be salty. The liquid will reduce, but the salt will not.

"You have to add the liquid little by little," continues Aasen, noting that the process takes about 20 minutes. "You can't just pour in a bunch of stock and let it boil." Using hot broth allows the grains to better absorb the liquid.

Add the liquid too quickly, and Ulrich warns that the result will be a "soupy, crunchy mess." He also recommends stirring risotto frequently — every 3 or 4 minutes — while it cooks. This keeps the grains from melding together and helps the dish to cook evenly. "Use a circular motion," he says. "Fold it in and swirl it around."

Ulrich advises using a wooden spoon for a more gentle touch. "You don't want to knock the kernels into each other. You don't want to break the kernels." The end result: "You should be able to see the individual grains, none of the grains are broken, it'll have a wavy texture, be creamy, and all the kernels should be fully cooked." For a classic risotto, Ulrich suggests topping it off by adding whole butter and Parmesan cheese to create a "nice and shiny, velvety texture."

"Risotto is one of the easiest things to make," he says. "And it's also one of the easiest things to screw up. . . . If you don't know what you're doing, it's easy to make a mistake." Once the risotto is ready, make sure it gets to the guest quickly, says Hosmer. "It’s one of the last things we prepare in a flight of food," he says. "It can become glutinous if it sits."

Timeliness versus tradition

It's lunchtime at CaliTerra in downtown Boston, and the restaurant is full of local businesspeople who want to enjoy a good meal and still get back to the office in about an hour. The problem: When prepared traditionally, risotto takes up to 25 minutes to fully cook. The solution, says Ulrich, is to partially cook risotto beforehand, spread it on large sheet trays, cool it and then finish the cooking process in 3 or 4 minutes when an order comes in.

"About 75 percent of our business is at lunch," says Ulrich. "We can’t spend 25 minutes making risotto as an appetizer. . . . We're in a busy financial district, and people are in a hurry here."

When it comes to risotto, chefs fall into two camps. Those, like Ulrich, who think that shortcuts are a necessity that hardly impact the final product, and those who swear by risotto's traditional cooking process and say it can't be changed or interrupted without sacrificing taste.

Aasen believes the traditional cooking method is the only way to go. "Once you get used to eating risotto the way it's really supposed to be, you won't want to have it another way," he says. His menu notes that an order of risotto will take 30 minutes to prepare — and many customers readily accept the wait, he says. Coco Pazzo also makes risotto fresh as the orders come. "The quality is much better," says Priolo.

Hosmer — who uses the precook, cool and finish method at Molive — purports that the shortcut does not significantly affect the quality. "It may lose a little, but I think that we're still able to provide a great product to our guests."

Lespinasse's Delouvrier says he uses a different shortcut, and that the risotto "comes out the same or even better" than using the traditional method. Early in the day, his staff simmers arborio rice in white wine and then lets it cool. When an order for risotto comes, the staff finishes the dish by simmering it for 6 minutes in chicken broth and then adding Parmesan cheese and whatever other flavorings. As a finishing touch, they spoon a ring of foamed liquid over the top to lighten the dish. The result is so impressive, says Delouvrier, that even if he had the time, he wouldn't go back to the traditional method.

At his quickservice Risotteria, Pace's cooking method allows him to finish preparing risotto within 5 minutes of receiving an order for it. But he’s not sharing any of his secrets. "It took me 4 1/2 years of research and development [to create this technique]," he says.

Stir up profits with risotto

Risotto’s labor-intensive cooking process has a benefit for restaurants — it's not a dish that a lot of people can prepare successfully at home, making it more appealing to order when dining out. "Making risotto can be intimidating for the home cook," says Hosmer, "so it's a treat to be able to go out and get it."

"It's a big, involved process," says Pace. "Risotto is very temperamental." It's something "people really can't make at home without a tremendous amount of effort."

And because rice is relatively inexpensive, risotto tends to be a high-profit dish, Park points out. "For restaurants, it's a profit-maker," she says, adding that risotto's reputation as an upscale comfort food also strengthens its appeal on menus. "It is elegant without being complex."

Pace agrees. "It’s common food for gourmets."

Back to top

Beth Panitz is associate editor of Restaurants USA.