In this segment of YRMC’s Your Healthy Kitchen, Rita turns a basic risotto recipe into something comforting, delicious, AND good for you by using hearty, high fiber barley instead of white rice, and adding an extra helping of veggies, including mushrooms. Rita’s Creamy Mushroom Barley Risotto recipe, along with other recipes and tips can be downloaded from yrmchealthconnect.org. You can also follow Rita on Facebook at YRMC’s Your Healthy Kitchen. Your Healthy Kitchen is one of the many ways that Yavapai Regional Medical Center provides health and wellness education to our community.
Welcome to your healthy kitchen from ymc welcome to your healthy kitchen I’m your host Rita Carrie Reuben today I’d like to share a healthy easy way to make risotto one of my favorite comfort foods risotto is a hearty belly worming dish that’s traditionally made with just a few simple ingredients short grain
Arborio rice chicken meat or vegetable stock some onions white wine butter and Parmesan cheese it’s very delicious but not terribly nutritious after all it’s essentially a dish made with lots of white rice and butter so fortunately you can turn a basic risotto recipe into something comforting delicious warming
And good for you by using a variety of high-fiber whole grains instead of white rice reducing the butter a bit or substituting olive oil and adding an extra helping of veggies there are an endless number of options for creating your own flavorful risotto and once you learn the basic risotto cooking method
The sky’s the limit so barley is one of my favorite whole grains to use in risotto and I’m going to use that today to make a rich and satisfying barley mushroom risotto mushrooms and barley YUM there’s a match made in heaven you know you can also use
Other grains instead of barley to make a decent risotto farro works well as do whole oats steel cut oats and short grain brown rice but out of all of these I like barley the best for a variety of reasons including its earthy flavor it’s nice chewiness and relatively short
Cooking time but we’ll talk about all of that in a minute let’s get cooking so risotto like I said is really simple you start with something flavorful and aromatic like an onion but you can also use shallots and garlic saute it in some oil and I’m gonna start this this
Mushroom barley recipe with a shallot and we’ve got a pan over here that’s been heating up and put a little bit of olive oil in the pan and olive oil looks works really well instead of butter a little bit of healthier fat and I use about a
Tablespoon which is a lot less than most risotto recipes which use up to three tablespoons of butter maybe sometimes more so shallot and saute it in olive oil we just a little pinch of salt the salt helps break the shallot down and draw its flavor out a little bit so just
Let that saute and I think I’ll also put a little bit of fresh ground pepper in there and let it sauté until it starts to get tender and while it’s cooking I’m gonna chop up a little celery so I like to add extra vegetables to the risotto traditional
Risotto is really mostly rice with just a little bit of addition sometimes it’s meat or fish sometimes just a little bit of vegetable on top but to make this a little healthier I just add some more vegetables and I almost make it more vegetables than green so celery just
Chopped up or diced into small pieces and you can throw the leaves in there as well adds a some nice color and some flavor and toss that in with the shallots and let them cook down for just a couple minutes so they tenderize just a little bit and then the next step is
To add the mushrooms so you can use any kind of mushroom for this risotto you can use some fresh portabellos or shiitakes or chanterelles any of those a little bit more expensive fancier mushrooms wild mushrooms go well you can use dried mushrooms and just reconstitute them soak them in water
Before you use before you use them and then chop them up and throw them in the dish or you can just use plain old white button mushrooms loops that are easy to find and really inexpensive and to prepare your shrooms just wipe them off sometimes
They come with a little bit of dirt and just wipe them off not don’t rinse them or soak them in water cuz mushrooms will absorb a lot of water and when you cook them it’s it’ll it’ll make the mushrooms they’ll take longer to cook and they
Won’t Brown as well if they soak up too much water so just give your your mushrooms a little a little wipe here and chop them up in small slices is fine they don’t have to be terribly thin and the trick for this dish for the mushrooms is to let them Brown in the
Pan which will really help develop the flavor and to do that what you want to do is take the mushrooms put them in the pan at a pretty high heat I think I might increase the heat here a little bit and stray them around maybe once to
Coat them in the in the oil and then let them sit there for a while and if they sit they will Brown a little bit faster you’re old we’re almost searing the mushrooms on really high heat I think I’ll turn it up just a little bit more
So keep an eye on them because it’s a high heat you don’t want them to burn so what those are cooking I want to talk a little bit about barley and how incredible it is it’s really it’s an incredible grain that’s easy to grow in marginal soils it helps rebuild soils
That have been eroded and overused it’s also a great cover crop that reduces weeds as well as pests and both the leaves and the seeds can be used as food you can even grow barley grass at home and use it in juice or snipped freshly into a salad barley compa contains more
Fiber than any other grain including wheat or brown rice or oats and it also has less of an impact on blood sugar and insulin levels than all grains including oats and barley can even lower blood sugar levels hours after you eat it in fact some studies show that people who eat
Barley with dinner have a better blood sugar level the next day even after breakfast so if you have this wonderful mushroom barley risotto for dinner your blood Sugar’s will be good the next day the fiber in barley also lowers cholesterol and it’s an important food that supports the growth of healthy
Bacteria in your gut the only downside really a barley for some is that it does contain gluten so anybody with celiac disease or gluten intolerance should probably avoid eating the grain the grass barley grass is gluten free but it boasts the slew of benefits on its own
So you can purchase barley in two different forms so the most common form is called pearl barley and it’s whole-grain barley that’s had some of the outer fiber removed so it cooks a little bit faster and what’s neat about barley is that the fiber is throughout
The whole grain it’s not just on the outside of the grain as with most other other grains like brown rice or wheat so when you remove a little bit of the outer green from the barley it still maintains most of its nutrients and it’s still a very high fiber grain so pearl
Barley is a great type of barley to use in this risotto because it because it cooks faster then whole grain or what’s called hulled barley which is this you can say a base see it basically looks the same the whole barley just has a little bit more of the outer fiber
Attached but takes longer to cook so you could use the whole barley but just know that it’ll take a while before it gets soft so other greens that you can use for your risotto include things like brown rice so our barrio rice the traditional grain used for risotto is a short grain white
Rice but you can use short grain brown rice as well it might take a little longer it will take a little longer to cook unless you you can soak the the brown rice overnight or pre cook it cook it till it’s almost tender and then add
It to the risotto and that will speed up the cooking process so brown rice a nice short grain brown rice works just fine you could also use farro which is an ancient form of wheat this is a cracked farro it’s the whole grain that’s just been broken up into pieces but you can
Use the whole grain farro as well again like the brown rice if you use the whole grain farro cook it ahead of time or just soak it overnight and that’ll that’ll speed up the cooking process as well oats oats make a great risotto as well and you can use whole grain oats or
Wetter also called oat groats it’s not the best name but they’re called oat groats it’s a whole grain oat and again just soaking or pre cook it ahead of time or you could even use steel cut oats in your risotto and that is just the whole oats that have been chopped up
Into smaller pieces so lots and lots of options quinoa you could use quinoa in your risotto or even buckwheat which is not a common grain in our diets we usually use it for waffles and pancakes but though this is what a whole grain buckwheat looks like and again it works
Really well for risotto some lots and lots of options so it looks like are the mushrooms are starting to brown and you can hear it too and these get really nice and brown they get kind of squeaky and they don’t all have to be brown it’s nice to have a
Variety of textures and flavors in the dish so just another minute they’ll be ready you’ll be ready to go forward here the next step for risotto after you you saute your your shallots your onions your garlic are all three some vegetables is is to add some some white
Wine and to add the grain that you’re using as well so alcohol or white or wine either red wine or white right you can use it in a risotto really brings out the flavors really interesting and wonderful savory flavors in the dish plus it adds a little flavor on its own
So I always put white wine in the in my risotto but you can skip it if for some reason you want to you don’t absolutely need it and then a scoop of of whole grains either 1/3 or 1/2 a cup of whatever whole grain you’re using and
Again this is pearl barley so throw that in your in your dish and saute the grain a little bit that will coat it with the oil and help it pick up a little bit of the flavor and then add the wine and the wine actually starts to make a little
Bit of a sauce in the risotto say and just let that simmer until the wine is almost all absorbed and the pan is almost dry and then you’ll be ready to add the next step which is the broth so so for risotto traditionally you saute up your
Vegetables and your grains and then you start to add the broth bit by bit about a cup at a time or a ladle at a time stirring between each addition and then you cook it until the pan is almost dry before you add some more broth so that way of cooking
Risotto slowly cooks the grains and draws some of the starch out of the grain and that that makes the sauce the creamy sauce that’s usually in a traditional risotto so you do the same thing with any other kind of grain the the barley works really well with that
Method but you could also if you’re if you’re short on time you can actually add all of the brothel at once and but just keep an eye on it and come back and stir it occasionally because what will happen is the brown the barley and every
Mushrooms and the onions that are on the bottom will burn if you don’t if you don’t stir it up so a couple ways to cook it you can also take this risotto once you add the broth to it you can stick it in the oven just cover up the
Pan and and bake it in that way you don’t have to to keep an eye on it so much so the wines pretty much absorbed here so I’m going to add a scoop full of broth and that this could be homemade vegetable broth or chicken broth or just
Some broth that you buy in the store and you add it about a cup at a time stir it up and and let it let it simmer and cook until that that broth is mostly absorbed well that’s well that’s cooking away I think I’m going to also add some
Sage some chopped up fresh sage which will flavor this risotto really well you could use you could use rosemary as well you could use thyme that would go really nicely it makes your kitchen smell like Thanksgiving with all these lovely flavors and aromas so about a teaspoon
Or so of fresh sage if you’re using dried herbs use about 1/3 as much as the fresh because they’re a little more potent it smells wonderful and then another trick is to add even more flavor you can add a parmesan rind so this is the hard edge of a wheel of Parmesan
Cheese so if you if you look in the store and you buy wedges of parmesan you’ll see there’s an always an edge that’s a little crusty and hard it’s not you don’t usually eat it you can put this in there and let it simmer with the
Broth and the barley and it has some wonderful flavor in the last addition usually to the risotto is a little Parmesan cheese which you can skip as well if you want to make this a vegan dish you don’t have to use any cheese at all and it’s really delicious that way
And and I usually top it with some parsley so this is what the dish looks like when it’s ready to go and it got a little warm here there it is so beautiful huh so there’s this lovely lovely flavor there’s mushrooms there’s shallots there’s parsley there’s sage
You can throw a little parsley on top of there a little Parmesan cheese mix it up and this could be a whole meal right here with some vegetables on the side or it could be a side dish there’s lots of way to include Barley’s in your meals so
I hope you try this soon there are so many ways to enjoy this nutritious grain you can try this risotto you could throw some barley into some homemade soup or try a barley salad and barley is really great served cold because unlike other grains that means it maintains a chewy
Moist texture when it’s chilled and you can also substitute rolled barley for rolled oats in the morning and it’s a great way to start your day and if you have diabetes you’ll likely get a better blood sugar after breakfast and throughout the day so for more healthy
Meal ideas recipes and lots of videos please visit us at please visit us at ymc HealthConnect org you can also follow me on facebook @ yr mcs your healthy kitchen where i share what i’m making in my own kitchen plus information on community food and garden related events and other fun and
Fascinating links to food and healthy living so until next time try this delicious risotto and we’ll see you soon