We Tried a Risotto So Good We Had to Recreate It

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Most people only know a few risotto recipes — saffron, mushroom, maybe seafood. But Italy is full of incredible regional risotti that almost no one outside the country has heard of. On a recent trip to the city of Verona we discovered an unusual risotto that turned out to be the best we’ve ever eaten, and it got us thinking that maybe it’s time to explore some lesser-known recipes.

In this video, Eva’s sharing three Italian risotto recipes that deserve way more attention (including the gem we found in Verona). Whether you’re an old pro looking for something new or a risotto beginner, you’ll want to try these dishes at home!

If you enjoy this video, please give it a like and subscribe to the channel!

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RISOTTO AL ROSMARINO RECIPE – https://www.pastagrammar.com/post/risotto-al-rosmarino-italian-rosemary-risotto-recipe

‘NDUJA & GORGONZOLA RISOTTO RECIPE – https://www.pastagrammar.com/post/nduja-gorgonzola-risotto-spicy-italian-risotto-recipe

RISOTTO ALL’AMARONE RECIPE – https://www.pastagrammar.com/post/risotto-all-amarone-extravagant-italian-wine-risotto-recipe

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00:00 – The Best Risotto We’ve Ever Eaten
01:59 – How to Make Risotto al Rosmarino
07:38 – Tasting Rosemary Risotto
14:08 – How to Make ‘Nduja Risotto
17:10 – Tasting ‘Nduja & Gorgonzola Risotto
20:20 – How to Make Risotto al Amarone
25:51 – Tasting Amarone Wine Risotto
28:37 – Pasta Grammarians in the Kitchen!

#risotto #amarone #wine

Today we’re here to talk about ratoto, but not just any rsatoto. The best ratoto that either of us have ever had in our lives. Is that fair to say? Absolutely. And just the memory of that risotto makes me drooling. Not too long ago, uh we happened to be passing through the Italian city of Verona, uh of Romeo and Juliet fame. She speaks. And for those who are more interested in food is the city of the very famous Pandora. Oh, the Christmas cake thing. Right. While we were there, we happened to go to a restaurant, Cafe Monte Baldo. If you ever find yourself in Verona, highly recommended. Uh we went there and ordered a rosato that is very uh typical, they would say, from the region. See, specific specific from that area of Italy. It was unlike any ratoto I’d ever had or heard of. Uh but it was the best ratoto I’d ever eaten. And Ava agreed with me. Also my brother who was with us agreed. So we’d like to share that ratoto with you today. But also a couple other rsato recipes because it got me thinking about how when most people I think go to make ratoto they stick to sort of a few really classic versions whether it’s Yeah. with saffron. The saffron rosato rato with mushrooms. Mushrooms with squash. Yeah, they are all amazing. Oh, very good. All amazing. But there are some others resort that they can be as good as the one that we mentioned before, but maybe a little bit more unusual, like the one that we liked a lot. So, that’s what we’re up to today. Ava is going to cook uh not only the risotto we had in Verona, but also a couple other risoto variations that you’ve probably never had before, but you might want to try. We always recommend for someone who never made the rot to start with the basic rato which is rotal parmyo is one of the rato that we included in our cookbook because it’s the simple simplest rato that you can make. What we are going to do now is the same of Rato Parana with just one ingredients added. And these ingredients for today is rosemary. Does that make this rosato al rosemarino? This is roato rosemarino. And believe me that the smell of this fresh rosemary, it’s already incredible. [Music] The first step when you make a rot is to take a pot, make it very hot, and when it’s very hot, you can toss your rice in and start to toast the rice. You can Oh, I thought you said toast the rice in, but you said toss the rice in. Toss the rice and then toast it. Toast it. Toss it and then toast it. Yes. For this recipe, I’m using carnaroli rice. Now, if you don’t find the carnaroli rice, you can use also ario, but I warmly recommend to find it because is the best rice for a while. The rice is tossing, we start with the basic ingredient for every resort, which are butter and onion. But this time I’m going to add also the rosemary because we are making risoto rosolino. We need to saute the onions the onion until the onion is translucent and tender which means 3 minutes 4 minutes. Now that 3 minutes are p are passed and our rice is well toasted. We turn off the rice and we add the rice into butter, onion and rosemary. And we start to mix. And this is the moment in which we had the other fundamental ingredient for every resort, which means white wine. [Music] We need to let the wine completely evaporate. one is completely gone. We can start with adding our vegetable broth that I prepared a little bit before with celery, carrots, potatoes, and tomatoes. As you can see, the wine is completely evaporated, which means that we can start with the vegetable broth. What about the salt? Because until now I didn’t talk about the salt. That is one of my favorite ingredients. We don’t need to salt the risotto because the rice will absorb the salt from the broth. So be sure to salt your broth in a way in which then all your dish is very well salted. If your broth tastes good, your rosato will taste good. Okay. If you can actually try your broth and it tastes good that you would drink your roato will taste good. What we need to do now is just let the rice simmer into the broth until the rice will be perfectly cooked al dente. The only thing that we need to do is keeping an eye on the roto because when the rotto it will dress out too much. What we need to do is to add a little bit of broth in the way in which the rice has always some liquid in which it can simmer. There is one thing that a lot of people when they cook the risotto they like to do which means standing close to the pot and just stirring all the time. You don’t need to do this. The roato is as enough smart to cook by itself. You need just to check on it. Depending on the rice that you are using for your ratoto, it can take in between 16 to 18 minutes to be ready. The best way to understand if your rice is ready is actually to try it. Mine is ready. Turn off the heat. Put inside a little bit of butter and some parmy and you start to mix. This is what in Italy we call mane. And this is what will make your risoto very very creamy. When all the cheese and all the butter is completely melted, and this is a very important step, take a lid and let your rot rest for 3 minutes. [Music] So, as you pointed out before, ratoto al paragano is one of the simplest rsotti you can make. But do not let that fool you because it is one of the best in its simplicity. It’s amazing. And when you have a dish that that that’s so simple, I know that just by adding one ingredient, rosemary, it’s going to completely change the dish. So, the smell of this ratoto. So, it’s the smell of a good ris plus the smell of rosemary, which is one of the best smells, let’s be honest. It’s maybe my favorite like savory flavor. Things with rosemary in it. I’m just an absolute sucker for me is like rosemary and basil. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, maybe next time we can think of making a basil roto. All right, let’s see how it is. It’s definitely creamy. It’s a risoto potato. [Music] Oh yes. The only thing that you can say is yes. Yes. That’s kind of all you should say to this risoto is yes. Just as just as beautiful in its simplicity, but that rosemary again totally changes it but gives it just this wonderful wonderful. It has a fresh taste because the rosemary at the end it has that Mediterranean flavor. And come on, it’s pretty easy to make. What you need at the end is just a few ingredients. Yeah, obviously it’s better to use a fresh rosemary because the dried rosemary doesn’t have all the flavor of the fresh rosemary. When you use the wine, use a wine that actually you could drink and not a very cheap wine that almost resemble a vinegar. Also, the rice, the quality of rice makes the difference. Can I share with you a revelation I had in the shower this morning? Yeah, not just with me. No, I’m serious. As one does when one is showering. I was thinking about risotto. You know, just a normal shower. Okay. I know we’re talking about rice and rsotato, but this applies equally to pasta. So, I’m going to use pasta as an example. And this is a little bit embarrassing that it took me this long to really make all of this click in my mind, but it finally did today. Okay. So, if you watch this channel much before, you’ve probably heard Ava say about a million times that if you’re looking for a good pasta or a good rice, one of the key indicators that tells you if it’s good or not is the cook time. So, if you are looking for a pasta to buy, look for the ones that have the longer cook times. If it has a really short cook time, it’s probably not very good. Same goes for rice. I don’t know why. I guess I never thought about it very much, but in my mind, I think I always sort of thought of that as being the cook time wasn’t the desirable quality, but it was like a symptom of quality. So, if you had a good pasta, it would also have a long cook time. Or if you had a good rice, it would also have a long cook time. What I realized this morning in the shower is that the long cook time is the thing that you want. It is the desirable quality. Now, you might be asking, Harper, why would I want my pasta or my rice to take longer to cook? And the reason is because that’s how you’re able to much more easily get the texture you want. Cuz if you have a pasta that cooks in 4 minutes, which some very terrible brands of pasta do, that’s rubbery. A pasta that cooks that quick and it’s just going to go from al dente to mush like that. But if you have a rice or a pasta that really is cooked slowly, then you just gradually work up to that. And if you overcook it by a minute, it’s fine. And if you undercook it by a minute, it broadens the the time that you have to reach the right texture. I always thought that the qualities you were looking for were like taste and texture and that the cook time was just sort of an indicator. But I realized this morning like actually that cook time that’s really important and you want that longer cook time. It took you how many years to understand this? Like six years. Thank you. Thank you. Yep. Only took me six years. What do you do in the shower? I don’t think about the cooking time of pasta. You don’t? No, I don’t. See, maybe it’s just you, Arthur. I think about what I can cook for lunch, for dinner, but not about the cooking time of pasta. Well, you’re always welcome to cook this for lunch or dinner. The next risotato I sort of know what you’re going to do only because it was a little bit of a request on my part. Let’s call it a rotto that puts together the south and the north of Italy. Something that I I thought theoretically might exist and turns out it kind of does. Before we get to that though, a quick word about today’s video sponsor. Let’s say you’re traveling around. I don’t know, maybe going to Verona to try the risotto. 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For those very few people who still don’t know what duya is, we put a link up here in some place where we explain everything about calabuya. Nowadua in every kind of possible ways which means brusquet pasta pizza calaca even gelato even gelato window. Yeah. And also chocolate window. Yeah. But it’s just rec recently that he comes to his mind if risa exist and it’s obvious that yes you can make a roy [Music] [Applause] [Music] to cook I sought more or less 6 7 minutes ago. I don’t want to say halfway through all the cooking process, but a little bit before it’s time to add the duoya. How much indua you need to add here? The answer is how much you like because it depends how your palette is suitable for the spiciness or not. It’s up to you. Yeah, you can really add as as much as you want, Eva, and we’ll be happy. I know. So what you need to do is just to mix because the will melt. And this is also a reason why actually I start this risotto with a little bit less butter because by the way do the is full of fat. So we want a balanced ratoto. We want we don’t want a greasy rot. What I’m going to add is just a little bit of tomato paste. [Music] I’m going to add a second very good ingredients to this rot which is gorgonella cheese. Do your gorgonzola are good as eggplants and tomatoes, peanut butter and jelly etc etc. some like before we mix it. So no butter this time also because of the India and the gorgon. Oh yeah. And then there is the gorgono. As I said, we want a balanced roto. We don’t want a greasy rotto. And like before, we need to wait 3 minutes. For those who have not been initiated into the magic world of Indua, I think it’s something that everyone should try, especially if you like spicy food. And when you pair induya with gorgonzola, whether it’s on a pizza or in like a sandwich with hot bread or something with the pasta. Oh, it is just one of the best things ever. Actually, we made also nachos. That’s right. We did nachos with indua and gorgonola. It’s hard to go wrong with indua and gorgenola, I guess, is the point. Your first rato with dua. Now we choose to make dua gonzola. It’s also real that you can pair dua with a lot of other things like duian tomato sauce and eggplants. I started listening and I looked like for campus shrimp soup, shrimp stew, shrimp salad. Okay. What up? What up? [Music] Spicy and cheesy. Those are those are my things. Those are my things. Actually, I think this is the first this Yeah, for sure. This is the first spicy ratoto I’ve ever had. Largely because rsato traditionally is made in Northern Italy where they do not have spicy food. No, not really. So, this is what happens when southern Italians are like, I want to make risotto. We just spice things up a little bit. So good. This is spicy. This is very spicy. It is spicy but you have the delicate taste. I don’t know if I can find delicate taste of gorgon to me is maybe compared to induya. No, but also by itself one of the strongest cheeses there is. It’s one of the best cheese to me. It tastes delicate. It tastes so good. I don’t know about that one. This has a very powerful flavor. I would say it’s very good. It’s really really good. We’ve heard from a lot of people who have been introduced and tried indua because they saw it on this channel. If that’s you and you’ve tried indua and you really like it, try making a ratoto with it. It’s really good. By the way, if you live in America where you cannot buy imported calabrian induya and all of the domestically made options are really really terrible except except for one. Check out Induya USA. They are a collab company. In fact, this is their induya, but from the Calabrian branch, and they set up shop in Seattle and make really, really good induya that’s available in America. And use code grammar at checkout for 10% off. There you go. All right, the time has come to get to the rosato that brought us here today in the first place. The rsato that even after having these amazing risotto you’ve made today, I still think is the best ratoto I’ve ever had. And I completely agree because it was just every single bite was just a bite of heaven. Now Ava is going to show you how to make this rosato at home. The problem is that it does come with a bit of a cost and I mean that literally. The rato that we are going to do now is a very easyto. There is nothing too complicated but it requires very specific ingredients. Number one the rice. I’m not going to use carnaroli rice like before, but I’m going to use galonano, which is a specific rice that grows around Verona, where this rotto is from. Every do you say Kiko grain? Yes, it’s a little bit shorter than the caroli rice. Number two, cheese. Even in Calabria, it was difficult to find the right cheese. Impossible. actually impossible because you couldn’t. So this roto requires Monte Veron which is a cow cheese. It needs to be aged or semi-aged. I didn’t find this in Calabria. So I decided to buy this other cheese that is still made make in Benito. The name is Bastardo de Graa. Uh the the bastard of graa. Okay. It’s a very very good cheese. Believe me, I tried with a name like that. It’s very good. Is it the official one? No. But my friends from Verona, they can forgive me and maybe they can send me some Monte Veron for the next one. In America or wherever you are in the world, if it’s not possible to find the Monte Veron, if it’s not possible to find the bastard gra, you can use a niched aiago where the expense comes come about the wine because this rato is called Rato Alamaron and Amaron is one of the best red wine not just in Italy but in all over the world and it’s not just one of the best red wine is one also of the most expensive red wine it’s also real that you have several level of amaron so you can reach I don’t know like 78 €900 €1,000 for a bottle where you can find one at least in Italy that is a little bit more affordable that is about 304 €4, which is still really expensive by Italian standards. That’s cheap in America. See, by Italian standard is very expensive. Once you have a bottle of Amaron tomo that it doesn’t happen every day. I get you make the roto. I agree. But you need also to try it and enjoy it a little bit. And this is what I’m going to do. It’s sunny. It’s so good. It’s embarrassing how good this wine is. Wow. We need to warm up our amalon. We put on a very low heat. Assume you don’t want it to boil. No, we need just to warm up. And now we start to add a little bit of the amazing amaron. [Music] It already smells like that rosato. [Music] So right now I add about half of the amaron that I’m going to use for this recipe. But as we know rice needs to cook in broth. So I’m I’m starting to add a little bit of broth and cook it normally like exactly a normal result. [Music] A little bit more than halfway through. I’m going to add all the rest of the wine. [Music] Look at that color. Now the rice is done. And like with all the risotto, we put inside butter and in this case the bastardo del graa or monte veron. So now the question is, will this be as good as the ratoto we had in Verona? Okay, to my defense, they used the right cheese. That’s true. So that’s true. Keep in mind this small difference. It smells the part. That’s for sure. For sure. The wine is good like the one we had in Verona. I know. But if you didn’t live up to the expectation and make the best risotto ever, then it would be a real waste of of some good wine now, wouldn’t it? It’s not my hope to make my roato as good as that one, but to be very very close. Okay. Oh, it smells so good. [Music] It’s very close. It’s very, very close. She’s being humble. This is amazing. This is absolutely amazing. is an amazing result. Still the best rato that I have ever cooked in my life. It’s very close to that one in the restaurant because there is the acidity of the wine but the creaminess and the fattness of the cheese of the cheese and the butter. Yeah. Yeah. It’s like you feel the acidity but at the same time is cuted by the fatness of the cheese. It’s amazing. And I know that like it seems like a shame to use such a good wine for cooking. I know people aren’t used to doing that, but when you taste it, you will understand why. It makes a difference using that wine. Also, because it’s like those kind of flavor you can have just if you use those ingredients. Yeah. Obviously, if you don’t use amaron, it won’t be a risoto alone because how can it be? That being said though, if you use a really good wine and do a similar thing and make a wine ratoto, it’s not going to be bad. It’s going to be a very good wine ratoto, which I don’t think many people ever think to make. We should go and buy all the very good wine of Italy and start to make risotto. So, we made we made roton. Then the next one will be rot. Then we have pineapple shrimp, lemon shrimp, coconut shrimp. Thank you guys for watching. We hope we gave you some inspiration to try some different risotto recipes. Who knows, you might find a new favorite. All the recipes will be down in the description below. If you try any of them, tag us in a picture on Instagram or Facebook @ pasta grammar. Like some pasta gramarians recently. We actually have two pasta grammarians this week because they both made the same thing and it’s incredible. Both Tom and Jan Michael, I hope I’m pronouncing that correctly, made incredible timali that are a little bit more complicated than a roto. Usually Ava and I only get a picture from someone who made a timbalo like maybe once a year. Very few people take on that challenge, but I think cuz we made a video about it recently. Some more people decided to give it a shot. So anyway, happy to see that. Thanks for making it. Well done. If you enjoyed the video, please give it a thumbs up. Hit that subscribe button if you haven’t already. And we’ll see you next time. down. I know. Arthur, is there a word for when you do a scarpetto with your tongue? No, but this means that this rato was out of the world.