Wild Mushroom Risotto

Wild Mushroom Risotto featuring a delicate white wine sauce. 

This is a wonderful italian recipe with aromatic wild mushrooms* and wild herbs combines with a crisp white wine for balanced flavors. 

*if you don’t have readily available wild mushrooms for purchase, then you can always use pre-packaged dried mushrooms that are easily found in most large supermarkets or gourmet stores... in these cases we would use only half the amount of dried mushrooms...so only three cups, instead of the six cups necessary for fresh wild mushrooms. 

Wild Mushroom Risotto: Ingredients

The ingredients that we are going to need for this recipe are the following:

• about a pound of a diverse variety fresh wild mushrooms (for diverse textures, flavors, and shapes...we recommend porcini, green or yellow oyster, morelles, krimini) Here’s a tip: a pound is about six cups. 
• one and a half tablespoons of fresh butter. 
• salt and freshly ground black pepper
• two small onions, finely chopped
• one clove of garlic, finely chopped
• one and a half cups of arborrio rice (the appropriate rice for traditional italian risotto)
• one ounce of high quality prosciutto (if desired), also finely sliced 
• one glass of dry white wine (in our case we recommend the crisp and citric flavors of Pinot Grigio)
• one and a half quarts of chicken broth or vegetable broth 
• one tablespoon of finely chopped parsley
• one teaspoon of finely chopped fresh thyme

Wild Mushroom Risotto: Cooking Steps

Starting our recipe if using fresh mushrooms, we must clean off the mushrooms of any dirt with a dry cloth.

With a small knife we cut the very ends of the mushroom stems, because generally there is impacted dirt on the ends that’s easiest to simply discard along with the hard edge. 

If the rest of the mushroom stem is hard or stiff, remove it entirely. If it’s soft, if can be used in the risotto recipe and should simply be cleaned off and kept. 

We cut the mushrooms in slices.

If starting our recipe is based on dried wild mushrooms, we’ll first soak them in warm water to enlarge them. Usually soaking time is around a half an hour.

Afterwards, we strain the mushrooms (but keep the water) and cut the mushrooms in slices.

In a big non-stick frying pan, we add a tablespoon of fresh butter, we start the fire on a medium flame and melt the butter.

We add salt and pepper to the mushrooms and add them into the butter for a light saute. (Approximately 8-15 minutes for fresh mushrooms, or 5-8 minutes for dry mushrooms - until the mushrooms inner juices evaporates.)

Now we melt the rest of the butter in a large heavy pot in which we saute the two finely chopped onions and the one clove of garlic for two minutes.

We add the rice, and the sliced prosciutto, and we mix them all together for approximately three minutes until a light golden color has been achieved. 

We then add the white wine (Pinot Grigio) and we leave the rice the slowly boil until the juice evaporates. 

After that we add most of the chicken or vegetable broth, until the rice is fully covered. And we let it slowly boil. 

Approximately every ten minutes, we add a little bit of the broth, while continuing to do this three to four times, until the rice is like ‘al dente’.

If we kept the water from soaking the dry mushrooms, use this water with the broth as well. 

Almost before the end of the cooking process, we add the already sautéed mushrooms, salt and fresh ground black pepper (as desired) and the finely chopped parsley and thyme. 

This delicious risotto is served well with an oak-aged Chardonnay. It can be chosen either as a first dish for small servings, or otherwise for a main course. 

Enjoy! 

Hungry for more wine recipes? I highly recommend this book: The Wine Lover's Cookbook!  (Book review on its way!) Available via Amazon!

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