HOW TO MAKE: Crab Risotto

Fresh from breaking down a crab Liam takes us through how to use it’s delicious meat in his version of a risotto. 🦀

Settled amongst the urban landscape and Staffordshire canalside, The Boat is a restaurant and micro-farm by chef Liam Dillon.

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Hi, I’m Liam Dylan. I’m a trained chef. I’ve worked in Mission Star establishments of my career. In 2017, I purchased the boat. And this channel is all about showing you behind the scenes what we do, our events, our recipes, the micro farm, and all the things that go into running a restaurant. [Music] Subscribe, follow our journey, and I hope you enjoy the video. Welcome back to Boat Kitchen. We are going to get into doing a risotto. Not just any risotto, a delicious creamy crab risotto. From the last videos we did, we showed you how to break down a crab. So, we’re going to use that crab meat in this recipe. You can change what you’re going to put in there. Doesn’t have to be crab. It could be a mushroom. It could be pee. It could be anything you want. But, um, this is how we’re going to do it today. And the recipe and everything is going to be in description. So, make sure you check it out afterwards. Let’s get cracking. Right. So, we start off the risotto with garlic, shellot, sweat it all down in some butter, and then we’re going to use beautiful sparkling wine from Pattingham in Wolampton. Arborio rice, a short grain arbor rice, not washed. One of the crucial elements of a good risotto is not washing the short grain rice cuz you want the starch. Anyway, we’ll get on to that. So, we’ve got the brown crab meat for the from the crabs for the rsotto. And then we’re going to use a little bit of muscle stock and some chicken stock in the base. And then going to finish it with mascapone, parmesan, and some chopped chives. So, we’ll start off with chopping the garlic. Peel the banana shots. Beautiful bay leaf. Again, can’t not cook without bay leaf to be honest in time. Nice rough chop of deli. Uh, first press rapid oil because cuz that’s what we like to use. And then we’re going to use polyal 25 g butter. And then we’re going to go in with the aromat garlic. One and a half shellots. We’ll get that sweating down nice and gently. Nice pinch of molden just to help sweating that down. Starting that seasoning. Just start to build that flavor profile. I haven’t been want to use a lot of pepper, but more recently I’m adding pepper. I see about adding peppers to things and let the shellot absorb the butter and the oil. And then when it starts the pans gets a bit hotter, we’re going to put the rice in. We’re going to toast the rice off before we put in the uh the wine. And we’re not going to use a metal anything metal when we making rosato. Nice spatula just so you’re not breaking down the grains of rice. Start to become cooked or translucent. So now we have a nice dryish pan. We can start to put the rice in. So, we’re just going to let that just roast the grains a little bit just if it is to seal them and just we start to absorb that first bit of alcohol. Right. So, that’s been just toasting off the the rice. It’s starting to crackle and starting to get nice and hot. So, now we’re going to add the wine in. Nice glass of wine. You just want to kind of cover the rice and then it can reduce down as a starting point or you can drink it. So, So just adding that flavor, lovely sweetness from the wine. It’s always good to add a little bit of wine to the cooking. And there’s no harm in opening the bottle of wine to use the So once that’s absorbed, and you can even see as early as this, you can see it’s a kind of creaminess coming from the rice. And then we’re going to start to add the muscle stock. It’s going to intensify that that seafood flavor. And it’s almost like you you’re making a rue or bashimal. You want to start adding that the liquid nice and slowly. Every addition needs to comes to boil. As you can pull, you pull your spatula through the rice, it needs to kind of hold there. If you’re pulling it across and there’s liquid there, don’t add the next bit. Just slowly slowly adding it. And then we’ll go in with the the brown crab meat. And then carry on finishing it. You can hear it in the pan as you’re as you’re stirring it in. You’re stirring this liquid in and the grains are hitting the side of the pan. You can hear them tink tink tink t. You know, you know they’re nowhere near ready. And then as it that was calmer, calmer, calm. And then as you’re stirring it, you want to hear that noise as it’s starting to absorb the liquid and starting to cook through. >> What’s the best result you ever had? >> The best result I’ve ever had. It’s actually, you know, probably probably a mushroom and truffle ratoto was the best one I had. Just the depth of earthiness of all all the mushrooms and then the truffle finish. It’s just amazing. Yeah. I think making a nice rosato, there’s so many different opinions of how rato should be and so I think people are a bit apprehensive of doing it because you’re not too sure how the real recipe is supposed to be or how it’s supposed to look. There’s so many terrible rsottos out there, I think. But just give it a go. Just try it. Just get a good good rice, good ingredients, and it it will shine. I think a good risotto is just making sure you get as much flavor into it as possible. Being just not al dente, but just cooked. I prefer it to be more cooked than al dente. A lot of people saying it’s got to be identical or I want it to be, you know, a little bit more. Again, it’s personal preference, isn’t it? That’s what it’s all about. Cooking is all about having your own stamp on things. So, if you’re going to get judged for how you like stuff, then it’s just takes the fun out of it. It’s starting to You can start to see the outside of the grains starting to like soften, go more translucent, and that’s when it’s starting to cook through. You can see in the pan, it’s starting to get that kind of creaminess to it. In a previous video, we broke down the crab, and we’re going to use that crab meat in this ratoto. Now, [Music] so this is the brown crab meat. We’ve been blended that down from the head meat. Just blended it down. So, brown crab’s gone in. We still have the white crab to fold in towards the end. So, we’ll fold a little bit in, then we’ll put some on to finish as well. So, we’re just checking now to see how far off those grains are. You can see it. So how creamy that has already started to become. All the grains are quite separate as well. It’s not just turned to mush, but they’ve just started to swell up and have taken on all of the all of the liquid you’re putting in there. The stock, muscle stock, chicken stock, and then the brown crab as well. So what I’m going to do, I’m going to take it out of this pan and we’re going to we’re going to finish a portion. And that’s what you do if you’re doing a batch at home. So if you like it spicy, add some chili to it. If you want it any other way, you want it totally vegetarian, keep it vegetarian. You can use vegetable stock or you want to take fish, you make fish stock. Spoon masapone, creamy creamy cream if you want or creamy rice, creamy liquid. And just going to help lovely butteriness, you know. Just loading it up. Same with the cheese. Adding the parmesan again. Not too much. We’re not making a cheese ratoto. So, we’re just going to just to finish it. And at this point, it’s very important that because you know that that rice is cooked, you’re not bashing it around with a a metal spoon. You got a lovely plastic, delicate spoon in there. So, we have our our white crab. So, you get a nice spoonful of white crab. Hold that through. Try that. salt. And I’m going to finish this nice chopped ice. And you don’t want it really dry. If you’re making a traditional ratoto, you want it almost not to hold its own weight. Just to just to sink and just to sit. And as you shake it, it should have a nice wobble to it. Ready to plate. right, we’ll finish with some more just because we can. We have it white crab. That’s it. That is the boats crab ratoto. Simple ratoto finish with beautiful crab meat. And if you like it, let me know. If you don’t, let me know. You got to try and change it, adapt it, do it, and let me know how you get on. But yeah, don’t forget to check out the crab breaking down video and but also enjoy. So good. Simple. It is too dry. It is too dry. You make it too dry.