Baked Mac-and-Cheese, However Make It Rice

Risotto will not be precisely a make-ahead meals. Sure, you may par-cook the rice, or velocity up the method with a strain cooker, however in the end it is a dish that must be completed proper earlier than serving. However after I was engaged on my arancini (rice balls) recipe, it occurred to me that there may simply be a approach to make use of the identical classes I might realized from the arancini and apply them to a make-ahead risotto recipe.

The problem with arancini is ensuring they arrive out moist and juicy. Most recipes have you ever begin by cooking a risotto, then chilling it and forming it into balls, and at last deep frying them. The issue is that risotto, as soon as cooked and cooled, doesn’t turn out to be moist once more when reheated until extra liquid is stirred in to loosen it up.

My answer with the arancini was to take a trick from croquette recipes by folding a bechamel-like combination into the cooked rice: bechamel, when reheated, liquifies greater than risotto alone will. It labored superbly, creating arancini with crisp deep-fried exteriors and flavorful rice facilities that circulation while you chew into them.

As I used to be frying my check batches of rice balls, I noticed that what I had truly created was a make-ahead risotto: one which melts and softens when reheated. And since forming and deep-frying rice balls is admittedly a bit little bit of a ache within the butt, I questioned why, if pressed for time, I could not simply load the rice filling right into a baking dish after which end it within the oven, multi function shot.

To check it out, I folded some diced mozzarella into the chilled rice combination, then spooned it right into a baking dish and topped it with a easy crispy topping of panko bread crumbs combined with parmesan cheese and a few melted butter.

As a result of I had discovered that sushi rice labored greatest for the arancini, I additionally used it right here (risotto rice had a bent to blow out a bit). However you would additionally make this work with risotto rice like carnaroli or vialone nano.

The outcomes have been scrumptious. Similar to a baked pasta, it is a bit thicker than its à la minute counterpart, and is deeply satisfying in that rib-sticking winter meals form of approach. In essence, that is the risotto equal of a baked mac and cheese.

The sweetness is which you could make the entire thing nicely prematurely, maintain it refrigerated, after which pop it within the oven till heated via and browned on high. My recipe right here makes use of the identical Milanese-style saffron taste as my arancini, however there isn’t any purpose you could not make this fundamental concept work with any risotto taste.

I am going to nonetheless make deep-fried rice balls once in a while, however I’ve a sense this make-and-bake technique might get much more play at my place, particularly after I’m entertaining.

November 2014