Creamy Risotto with Butternut Squash

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✅ Creamy Roasted Butternut Squash Risotto
👩‍🍳 Serves 4
Prep time: ~15 minCook time: ~1 hour

🧂 *Ingredients*
For the roasted vegetables
* 1 medium butternut squash
* 1 large white onion
* 1 whole garlic bulb
* A few sprigs of fresh thyme and rosemary
* 1 tbsp salt
* 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
* 1–2 tsp harissa seasoning (or substitute: smoked paprika + chili flakes)
* 2 tbsp olive oil

*For the risotto base*
* 300 g Arborio rice (or another risotto rice)
* 1 small white onion (or 2 shallots), finely chopped
* 2 cloves garlic, minced
* 2–3 tbsp olive oil
* 1 L hot vegetable or chicken stock
* 100 ml dry white wine
* ½ tsp salt (plus more to taste)
* 1 small sprig fresh thyme
To finish
* 50 g cold butter, cubed
* 50 g grated Parmesan cheese

*Instructions*
1. Roast the vegetables
1. Preheat oven to 180 °C (350 °F).
2. Cut the butternut squash in half lengthwise. Scoop out the seeds (save them to roast later if you like).
3. Place the halves on a baking tray. Season generously with salt, pepper, thyme, rosemary, and harissa seasoning.
4. Drizzle with olive oil.
5. Cut the onion in half and slice the top off the garlic bulb. Place both on a sheet of foil, season with salt, pepper, and olive oil, then wrap tightly to form a pouch.
6. Add the foil packet to the tray with the squash.
7. Roast everything for about 45 minutes, until the squash is fork-tender.

*Make the risotto base*
1. While the squash roasts, heat 2–3 tbsp olive oil in a large pan over medium heat.
2. Add the chopped onion and garlic, cooking for 3–5 minutes until soft and sweet.
3. Add the Arborio rice and the sprig of thyme. Stir gently (with a wooden or silicone spoon) for about 5 minutes, until the rice looks translucent around the edges.
4. Pour in the white wine and cook until it evaporates (2–3 minutes).
5. Begin adding hot stock, one or two ladles at a time. Stir frequently, letting each addition absorb before adding more.
6. Add ½ tsp salt early in the process so it absorbs into the rice.
7. Continue adding stock and stirring for about 15–18 minutes, until the rice is creamy but still slightly firm (“al dente”).
8. Remove the thyme sprig.
9. Add the cold butter (a few cubes at a time) and stir until melted and creamy.
10. Stir in the Parmesan cheese.

*Make the butternut squash purée*
1. When the roasted vegetables are done, scoop the soft flesh of the squash into a blender.
2. Squeeze out the roasted garlic and add the roasted onion. Discard any tough skins and herbs.
3. Add 1 ladle of stock and blend until smooth but not too thin. (Add a bit more stock if needed.)

*Finish the risotto*
1. Return the risotto pan to low heat.
2. Stir in 1–2 ladles of the butternut squash purée. (You’ll have extra — refrigerate or freeze it for next time.)
3. Cook for another 2–3 minutes so the rice absorbs the squash flavor.
4. Taste and adjust seasoning — likely another ½–1 tsp salt.

*Serve*
Serve immediately, topped with extra Parmesan, a drizzle of olive oil, and maybe a pinch of harissa or fresh herbs.
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Let’s make a creamy and delicious butternut squash risoto. Now, we’ve got here one butternut squash, which we’re going to cut first in half. We’ll get all the seeds out, which you can keep them, dry them up, and you can use them roasted as a snack or you can use them as a garnish for the soup. Now, instead of cooking this just in a pan, which you can do, and I do it sometimes, we’re going to try to get a lot more flavor out of this by roasting it into the oven. So, it goes into a tray and we’re going to add the seasoning. Now, this is a thick squash, so you want to add quite a bit of seasoning right from the beginning. Salt, about a tablespoon, freshly ground black pepper, a good teaspoon. We’ve got thyme and rosemary, a few sprigs of each. Now, I like my squash to be spicy. So, in this situation, we adding some haresa seasoning. Now, I love the harisa seasoning because it has all sorts of ingredients in it from chilies, cumin, coriander, smoked paprika, garlic, and probably many others. Now, it’s time to follow with some olive oil. And I’m not just roasting the butternut squash. I’m also roasting the onion and the garlic, which I’ve got here a large white onion. I’m just going to cut it in half. Trim the ends. I got one large of garlic. Cut it in half. And all these are going into aluminum foil. And the reason why I’m adding them into the aluminum foil is because otherwise they will get too dry and we want to make sure that they stay together enclosed into this pocket keeping all the flavors inside. Salt, pepper, olive oil. About 2 tablespoons. And now we’re just going to enclose this. And now our tray is ready. And we’re going to get this into the oven at 180° C for about 45 minutes or until the squash is cooked all the way through. When you test it with a fork, it goes easily through it. Then it’s when you know it’s ready. Now, while our butternut squash is cooking into the oven, we have plenty of time to get the risoto base ready. and is a video that I’ve done a few weeks back and we’re just going to get to it and see how to make the perfect risoto base for this recipe. And I’ve got here one small white onion. And in an ideal situation, you might want to use shelots instead of white onion just because it has a lighter onion flavor. But in most situation, you’re not going to find shelots in your regular shop around the corner. So with onion, you’ll be just fine. Now, two cloves of garlic. And again is a situation when some recipes will not even talk about adding garlic. I feel like it works. It brings something to this recipe that makes it taste better. But if you don’t like it or if you want to skip it, that’s totally fine. Now, set the pan on medium heat. And when the pan is hot enough, we’re going in with about 2 three tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil. In goes the finely chopped onion and garlic. And now we’re going to cook this for about 3 to 5 minutes or until the onion starts becoming sweeter during the cooking process. Now we have here 300 g of aroreio rice. This is the perfect rice for risoto. It works really well. It’s got high starch content and it gets nice and creamy. So when you’re buying your rice, make sure that is suitable for this dish because there is a specific variety that you want to choose is either this or there are a few more. But make sure that is suitable for risoto. This doesn’t require washing, by the way. It’s not like when you’re making um let’s say something with basmati rice. This goes in as it is because you don’t want to wash off that starch that surrounds the grain. Now, at this stage of cooking, I also like to add a springrig of fresh time. And we’re going to continue cooking this for about 5 minutes or until the grain of the rice starts becoming translucent at the edges. So, you almost start seeing through it. then is when you know that you can move to the next stage of cooking. Now, a quick important tip here. When you’re mixing into your risoto, make sure that you’re using a wooden spoon, a silicon spoon, something that’s slightly softer texture so you don’t break the grain whilst mixing. Now, I’m happy with what I see here, and I’m going to add now the white wine. I’ve got here about 100 ml of dry white wine. And we’re going to cook this for a further 2 3 minutes or until the wine evaporates. And all we end up with is the flavor from the wine. So most of the alcohol will evaporate during this process. I have here one liter of vegetable stock, but you can also go with chicken. I actually quite like chicken, but in this situation, I made some quick vegetable stock. Doesn’t take long. All you need is just a few vegetables. Simmer them for an hour and there is your vegetable stock right there. So, you can go with chicken stock if you wish, but the key here is make sure that it’s hot when you’re adding it in. Because if it’s not hot, it will stop the cooking process of the rice and you need to wait again to get to a simmering temperature and so on. Because we’re going to add this gradually, we’re going to begin with two, three small ladles. Now, something that I’m quite keen on doing right after starting adding the stock is to add the salt in. So, I’m going in with about half teaspoon to begin with and we’re going to test at the end. But, it’s important in my opinion to add the salt at the beginning because during the cooking process that will get absorbed by the grain and you will have so much better flavor than just adding the entire seasoning at the end. Now, before you get to the 16 minutes cooking time, make sure that you taste your risoto and see it might be ready earlier. So, something to bear in mind because you don’t want to overcook it. And a term that you probably hear a lot is al dente. That’s how risoto should be cooked. That’s how pasta should be cooked. And this is a term that Italians use a lot. And what does that mean is to bite. So, when you bite into it, it’s cooked, but it still has a bit of texture in there. So, it’s not cooked like all the way through. Now, I’m happy with what I see here. So, we can remove the time. It’s done its job. And in order to make this creamier, but also giving it more flavor, this is what we’re doing. I’ve got here 50 g of butter, cold butter, chopped into cubes. And I’m going to add two at a time. Mix. Make sure that they get absorbed by the sauce. And then we’re going with two more. And so on. And now is also the time when we’re going in with about 50 grams of grated Parmesan cheese. Make sure everything gets well incorporated and your risoto gets nice and creamy. And after about 45 minutes of cooking, our butternut squash is ready. And now what we want to do is scoop all that inside of the squash out, removing the skin because that’s quite tough and we don’t want that in our risoto. straight into a blender. The thyme and the rosemary obviously will get removed. Same thing with the onion and the garlic. It can be a bit more tricky with the garlic, but if you’re using a fork, you can get it out easily. And now the plan is to blend these into a puree. So, you don’t want to go too thin in terms of consistency. And I have here some vegetable stock from when we cook the risoto. That will help bringing all this together because at this point it’s going to be a bit too thick. So about one ladle goes in to begin with. And if we need more, we can add more. This is the consistency we’re looking for. And now the risoto goes back on the heat. And we’re going to add about one two ladles to begin with of the puree that we just made. Now, this will be more than we need for this recipe, but that’s absolutely fine because we’re going to keep this in the fridge. We can keep it for a good few days or you can freeze it and it will last a long time. And because we cooked our risoto to about 80% from where we want it to be, the 20% of cooking will happen now with the sauce. So now the risoto has the chance to absorb some of that butternut squash flavor. It will be just so much better than just mixing it and serve it right away. And we’re going to give it about 2 three minutes of cooking. But this is the time when we going to taste for seasoning. And I think we could do with another teaspoon of salt. And my friends, this is our risoto right here. And I hope you enjoyed this simple recipe. If you did, make sure to give me a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel for more simple recipes like