Risotto with Brown Rice

[elfs]

I tried making vegetarian risotto with brown rice tonight, since Lundberg Farms makes a risotto-quality brown rice. It took 90 minutes to soften tolerably, and in that time absorbed far more salt from the broth I usually use than normal white Aborio.

I think, if I try this again, I'll have to find another way to cook it. This just didn't work. Too much salt for my normal diet. Bleah. Kouryou-chan didn't eat it; I had to give her a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich instead.

Comments

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[hlmt.livejournal.com]

I agree with acelightning's solutions, but I'm a little confused... The risotto is supposed to soak up all the broth you use. So even if it's Arborio, if you use the same quantity of liquid, it'll be just as salty. Did you need to use more broth, and that's what made it more salty?

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

One trick is to boild a few potatoes in the broth to take the salt out, but it likely takes out the flavour too. Probably needs to care earlier in the process so that the broth isn't so salty to start with.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

It took much more broth than usual. Risotto doesn't soak up all of the broth; some of it boils off. It took 90 minutes to get the rice to the point where it was edible, and in that time the salt had become much more dense than would happen in a risotto that usually takes 20-30 minutes.

I suspect that part of the problem was that since I didn't use any prosciutto or pancetta, I thought I would be safe using the vegetable broth which is not low-salt rather than the usual chicken broth which is. I also used butter rather than olive oil for the saute', and that adds more salt to the recipe.

[hlmt.livejournal.com]

Ahh, makes sense... Since I only make my risotto vegetarian, I use (for 1.5 cups of Arborio rice) only two cubes of vegetable bouillon, no matter how much water I use. I dissolve the cubes in the first two cups of boiling water, and keep on adding water when I get to about 1 cup, until towards the end when I finally stop diluting it. Perhaps some method like that might help...

[memegarden.livejournal.com]

On yesterday´s "Hell's Kitchen" (which I watched with Icelandic subtitles, due to being in Iceland), someone got kicked off the show for that. Salty risotto, I mean. I think having to make a peanut-butter sandwich is probably a more palatable consequence.