For a long time I was not a fan of risotto. Color and consistency are not necessarily appealing to me. With my gluten intolerance my search for alternatives to pasta drove me towards rice which fortunately is naturally gluten free. In addition, usually you have the ingredients at home, or can use what you have in the freezer or in the refrigerator. It is a big plus for risotto that you can come up with a nice dinner pretty much any time, with new variations. Exactly this is also the reason I decided to do a vegan mushroom risotto.
I do not stack Parmesan at home but nutritional yeast, the vegan alternative to Parmesan, I carry in my pantry most of the time. In addition, nutritional yeast will give you a little extra B vitamins, good for nerves, skin, hair and nails. Further nutritional yeast helps with the creaminess of the risotto, together with the pureed dried porcini mushrooms but all with fewer calories than Parmesan.
Dried Porcini Mushrooms provide a particularly intense mushroom flavor and nutritional yeast adds this familiar taste of cheese to this dish as well as some more creaminess.
Important for Risotto are the right ingredients that help bring the dish to life. I opted for mushrooms, a mixture of dried porcini mushrooms and fresh mushrooms. But you can also still add peas or spinach. There are many variations for risotto. Make sure you use the right rice. It must be a short grain rice, but please do not just pick up the rice used for rice pudding, you will not achieve the same result. Rice pudding rice is often broken and will end up in a mushy consistency. There are varieties of rice, that is suitable for risotto, for example Vialone or Avorio. You can buy real risotto rice pretty much in every supermarket.
I believe fresh mushrooms suite risotto very well. In combination with the intense, dried porcini mushrooms you will get an amazing vegan mushroom dish.
The vegan Mushroom Risotto tastes also great with added peas.
Risotto rice is very starchy. Because the rice is hulled and polished, the starch is released through regular stirring into the “sauce” and the risotto gets this creaminess that the perfect risotto needs. A little bit of work but have a nice glas of wine in your hand, someone joining you for a nice conversation and everything will be fine.
Vegan Mushroom Risotto
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Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups Risotto Rice e.g. Arborio Rice
- 1/2 cup Porcini Mushrooms Dried
- 3/4 cup Cremini Mushrooms
- 2 tbsp. Coconut Oil
- 1 Onion
- 1 Clove of garlic
- 1/2 cup Dry White Wine
- 4 cups Vegetable Broth
- 2 tsp. Nutrional yeast
- Sea Salt – For seasoning
- Pepper – For seasoning
- 2 tbsp. Parsley
- 1 tbsp. Pine nuts
Instructions
- Boil some water, pour the water over the dried porcini mushrooms. Let them sit for around 20 minutes. Afterwards pour the water away, rinse the mushrooms again. The mushrooms could still have some sand stuck to them.
- Peel the onion and garlic, cut them in small cubes.
- Heat up the vegetable broth. Add half the vegetable soup and porcini to mixer and mix everything until the porcini are all pureed and the broth looks more like a gravy. Make sure the lit is tied on the mixer so no hot broth will get out and burn you.
- Heat the coconut oil in a big pot, add the onions and garlic as well as the rice. Stir everything until golden, make sure nothing burns. Add the white wine.
- Add a bit of hot broth to the pot and stir. Only add more broth after the broth before has been absorbed by the rice.
- Wash and cut the cremini mushrooms, add them to the rice after around 10 minutes. Add more broth until after around 20 minutes the rice should have the right consistency. Should not be too mushy and it should still be enough liquid surrounding the rice.
- Add the nutrional yeast to the risotto as well as the parsley. Taste and season with sea salt and pepper. Serve the risotto with some mushrooms slices, a bit parsley and some pine nuts on top.