I am so happy that I can now make risotto! AND IT IS DELICIOUS!

Risotto has never been a meal that I would choose at a restaurant or make at home. I didn’t grow up with it and didn’t know much about it. All I knew that it was rice, meh… “I can get rice at any restaurant,” I thought.

So a friend of mine told me that she made mushroom risotto with truffle oil a few days ago, and she sent me a recipe by Trio Carmel. She said that it was really good especially because of the truffle oil.

Since I just began exploring the world of this wonderful oil, I decided to try out this recipe. However, here’s the dilemma, I am on a diet! I count calories to lose weight and eating a lot of carbs will ruin my diet. So I modified the recipe to fit my diet. I used portobello and cremini mushrooms to lower the calorie (almost 1500 grams of mushrooms) and only 1.5 cups of uncooked arborio rice.

The whole batch was 2005 grams in total with 1727 calories which means it’s only 0.86 calories per gram. If you have 400 grams of the risotto ( in my opinion, that’s plenty), the calorie count is only 344 calories. I’m currently on a 1200 calories per day so having a filling and delicious meal of only 344 calories is awesome! I also added 5 grams of freshly grated parmesan cheese (18 calories), a 1/8 tsp of truffle oil (approx. 18 calories), and 50 grams of raw spinach (12 calories). One total serving is 392 calories!

 

MUSHROOM RISOTTO

Yield: 5 servings     |     Prep Time: 20 minutes     |     Cook Time: 1 hour

Creamy without any cream added!

Ingredients:

1 medium onion (350 grams)

8 cloves of garlic (38 grams)

8 portobello mushrooms (964 grams)

454 grams cremini mushrooms

2 tsp olive oil

1 1/2 cups arborio rice

6 cups beef broth (I used 30% less salt)

1 cup Pinot Grigio or other dry white wine

Salt and pepper to taste

Parsley as garnish (optional)

Spinach (optional)

Instruction:

1. Simmer beef broth in a sauce pan. You need the broth to be warm when adding it to the rice.
2. Cut up onion in cubes and mushroom into bite sizes.
3. In a large skillet, heat up olive oil and add onion. Cook until translucent.
4. Add mushroom until browning then add garlic until fragrant.
5. Add salt and pepper as desired. Don’t put too much pepper like what I did (mine turned out to be a bit too spicy).
6. Add arborio rice to the skillet.
7. Pour the white wine. Stir until almost all wine is almost all absorbed.
8. Very important to keep stirring continuously.
9. Start adding beef broth one ladle at a time. When you add one ladle of beef broth, stir until all beef broth almost fully absorbed. Keep doing this until broth is finished. It is important to be patient white doing this step because you want all rice to be cooked evenly. Keep stirring. Since there was so much ingredients in the skillet, it took at least 40 minutes for the rice to be fully cooked. If you think the rice is not fully cooked after finishing 6 cups of beef broth, you can add more broth until the rice is cooked.
10. Don’t over cook the rice because you don’t want mushy rice. Take a bite and see if the rice is still a bit firm but feels cooked. That’s when you know the rice is done.
11. Optional: Saute spinach to add to every serving so that you still eat some greens.

 

Calories per serving (400 grams): 344 calories

 Calories per serving with 1/8 tsp of truffle oil, 5 grams of parmesan cheese, and 50 grams of spinach: 392 calories

If you are trying to cut back on calories and if you are happy with the mushroom risotto taste by itself, you can opt out of adding truffle oil and parmesan cheese. I like those two ingredients so I will still add them to my meal :)

 

Hope you like the mushroom risotto!