When I was in grad school, I lived alone and had no social life. In my boredom and solitude, I would fixate on certain dishes, doing them over and over until I felt pretty confident with them. Risotto was one of these things and took up several weeks of my life, and to this day, some 13 or 14 years later I can still make a pretty mean risotto; however, I still get it in the meal kits from time to time. Risotto typically has wine added to the rice before adding in the broth, or you can do as Alton Brown does and add wine straight to the stock that you add to the rice over time. Of course, HF isn’t going to send wine with their meal kits, but these meal kits typically add some kind of acid to replace the wine that isn’t present— and to me that is a non-negotiable. I was surprised to see that there was nothing like a white wine vinegar or even a lemon included in the ingredients, so I dug into my cabinets to find one of those mini bottles of Sutter Homes Chardonnay to splash into the risotto because otherwise I think it would have seemed rather bland without an acid in there. In the end, I think it turned out alright, but I think HF dropped the ball on their recipe. If you don’t have wine on hand, imo, splash a little white wine vinegar in once the rice has toasted. Emir gives it an 8/10 because the chili flakes made him sneeze.
by salukis