Italian Rice Balls (Arancini) by Angie’s Home Cooking

Angie and Jonas are “back again”! This time, Jonas shows his own take on Italian rice balls, aka arancini.

Hi everybody. I don’t know even what to say. Uh we’ve been missing here a while. We’ve had some ups and downs, but we’re back. My grandson that was six when we started is now 21, towers over me. And uh one day we decided or he decided he wanted to try to make rice balls which arenchini is another word for it. And they were so good everybody that tasted it said it was the best they ever had. So we thought today we’d make them again. He mostly makes them. I’m his sue chef. I don’t do anything. I just observe and give orders. And uh hopefully you’ll like our recipe. You’ll try it. Hopefully, we’ll be back a little more often when we find things to do. And Jonas is going to explain the ingredients and how to get started. Okay. And it was so nice. Hopefully, we’ll see some of our old friends again. Thank you. So, first we’re going to make the rice. Um the first time I did this, I didn’t really have a plan. We just kind of got some rice and uh tried to figure out how to make a rice ball. Um, so this is not standard uh aranchchini rice. This is extra long grain rice, which seems to be the opposite of what the internet says is best for this. Um, but what I’ve always done is extra long grain rice and this better than bullion stuff to flavor it. Um, this I found has the best flavor and it’s easiest to dissolve in hot water. Um, so that’s what we’re going to do first. We’re going to make the rice. And it’s important that you do this first because before you form the balls, you should cool the rice down after cooking it. So now I’m making the broth that I’m going to use to cook the rice. So like I said before, we like this Better Than Bullion chicken, roasted chicken base. There’s a low sodium one, so if you want low sodium, you can get that, too. Um, I’m following the directions from the jar here. So it’s going to be one teaspoon per cup, basically. Um, so that’s what I’m going to be doing. Get messy here. This doesn’t have to be perfect. If you use a little extra, it’ll just make everything taste better. So that’s for this is four cups and that’s two cups because um we are doing three cups of rice which requires six cups of water. The amounts that we’re making for all of these will just depend on how many rice balls you want to make and also how big you want to make them and all of that. So, you just want to It’s better if this water’s hot. It’s not the hottest water, but you just want to combine it pretty well. And I can rinse my finger off in there. It’s going to be boiled anyway. So, now we’re going to start cooking the rice. So, I started this pan out, put some olive oil. Uh, it’s heating up. Then, I’m going to add the rice. This is, uh, my three cups of rice. I used the extra long grain, like I said before, not necessarily the most important. One thing to note is I didn’t wash this, and I think that does matter. I’m not really citing from anywhere, but I think this does matter because the starch that’s left on here, I think helps it all congeal together when it’s when you’re finally actually making the rice balls with this rice. So, going to add that in this. I remembered I just saw this on some other rice ball recipe that they like did this first like they they got the rice to have like this I don’t know olive oil coating before they added all the before they added all the broth and uh yeah like that. I don’t think it needs to actually cook for any amount of time. You just want it to be coated like this. And then I’m going to add my broth. You might not have it all dissolved. It’s all right. It’s a good reason. It’s a good thing we use a little extra. So now this is just a this is just cooking rice. So this just needs to just needs to cook. Um we’ll come back to you when it is all cooked. So now you can see this is roughly the consistency that you want the rice to be in. Um we really just let the water, you know, cook the rice and boil. Um, it’s going to it should be a little bit crunchy. Like not like crunchy crunchy, but like a little a little undone because when we fry them, that’s going to cook it the rest of the way. Um, so now we’re going to put them on these sheets to cool because we want the rice to be cool when we form it. Otherwise, it’ll be harder to form the balls. Also, you don’t want to burn your hands with hot rice. Now, we’re going to make uh some chopped meat for the rice balls. Um so, we have a pan here. Same pan as before with the rice. Um you can do it in a smaller pan cuz obviously there’s going to be less mass. Um put some olive oil. I didn’t wash out the pan. I just kind of got rid of all the rice. That’s fine. We get some chicken flavor in with your meat, I guess. So, here we have uh carrots, celery, and onions all chopped together. We get this at the supermarket pre-made, but you can obviously get the parts separately and uh chop them up yourself. Garlic, three cloves chopped. And this is meatloaf mix. We like meatloaf mix cuz we think it has a better flavor, but if you don’t, then you can just go with regular ground beef for this step. Add in carrot, celery, and onions first. You want to add onion before garlic cuz onion takes longer. to get soft. And just in general with rice balls, um you don’t have to make them all the same size and you also don’t have to fill them all with the same stuff. Like if you just don’t like garlic, you don’t like onions, you don’t like meat in your rice balls, you just want like sauce and cheese, then you can do that. Um we’re just doing it this way cuz this is a version we found to be very good. But but yeah, it’s not a very Not a definite recipe for sure. I’ve seen online there’s like dessert rice balls, too, but I haven’t gotten into that. All right, so this has been cooking for a little while. I noticed I can start to smell it. Got the aromomas. So that that means for me it’s about time to put the garlic in. Garlic burns the quickest. So, you definitely want to add that last when you’re talking about your vegetables. This point, I’m going to add a little bit of salt and pepper. That smells good. couple minutes, the garlic will start to brown and then I’m going to add my my meat. This was pretty quick after I added the garlic, but it’s about time to put the meat in. Um because you’re just going to mix it up anyway. Kind of use my hands there. And unless you just want to just want to be breaking up the clumps. I’m just going to keep cooking and we’ll come back when it’s brown. All right, it’s all browned. Um, I added a little bit more oil and I add another pinch of salt just cuz I kind of could smell it. I don’t know. You get you get an idea. And obviously you can taste this in the process. Make sure it tastes to your liking. Um, but this is it all ready to be put into our rice balls. All right, so we’ve got all our ingredients. Um, all that you haven’t seen so far is these breadcrumbs. We use the 4C panko seasoned breadcrumbs with Pecorino Romano. Um, and we’re going to add, this is shredded parmesan. We’re going to add just a little bit to our breadcrumbs. And this is for breading the rice balls. We’re just going to add a little of that in. Mix it up. And this is going to be part of our breading procedure. So, Graham over here is going to do that. This is two eggs scrambled. Um, this is this is a jarred tomato sauce. Um, we found that like a couple jarred tomato sauces are pretty good and for this purpose, you’re not super focused on the sauce flavor cuz this is going inside the ball. Um, so yeah, this is just a jar jar tomato sauce um that we like. Uh, other than that, we have mozzarella cubed. This is uh fresh, not not like in a package. All right. Now, we’re going to make the rice balls. Before we do that, I want to mention about the rice. Um earlier I said to let it cool before you do this. Um what we did, we put that on we put it on that pan and then we put it in the fridge. And after the fridge, we just kind of put it in this bowl so that it’s easier to grab when you’re making the balls. Um also, it’s been a while since I made these. So, we did a test one and it’s very large, but uh it looks good. So, so yeah, here’s how you make my version of a rice ball. So, I have very large hands, so this is very much going to vary on your hand size for the person who’s making it. Um, so I kind of just grab some rice, right? Um, I put it into the palm of my hand like this. I don’t I really don’t know how to explain it any better than what I’m doing, but then I’m just going to start putting the stuff on. So, I start with a little bit of sauce. I put some mozzarella. Then, I grab some of our meat. I try to get some of the vegetables from the meat in there just so that it’s No one’s going to see this, but just so it’s a little more colorful. Then I’m I’m just going to pinch this cheese. Little bit of cheese, shredded cheese. And then this is where it gets kind of crazy. You just kind of grab with your other hand more rice and you kind of just mush them all together. Uh what comes in handy for me, the reason you want to make it the size of like this, like you both have your hands smushed together, is so that you can form the ball very easily like this. You can see I got a little sauce leakage out of uh out of that side, but other than that, the ball is pretty much formed. I do make a mess. Um but now we’re going to go to egg. So Graham there is going to move it around in the egg and then she’s going to move over to the breadcrumbs and then that’ll be it. I’m the sue chef today. It’s uh possible in this step that it might break apart a little bit. Um so if you see that or feel that happening, then you want to just squish it back together like Graham’s doing there. And uh we like good amount of breadcrumbs and cheese on ours. So just trying to Press them in. Is this okay, Jonas? Looks good to me. Okay. My god, one of these is plenty for dinner and breakfast. God bless. So, we’re going to make the rest of these and we’ll be back when we’re frying them. All right. So, you can see we have our finished rice balls here. And we have our very hot pot of oil here. Have a thermometer out so I can make sure the oils to temperature. It’s about 350 right now. We used canola oil. Um, and yeah, we’re just going to fry them until they’re nice and crispy on the outside. So, I’m using this tool, I don’t know what you call it, to uh drop them in. And there we go. It’s looking good so far. Actually, turn down a little bit. And with with frying like this, you definitely can uh put like a small layer of oil in a pan and do it that way. Just keep rolling them around. um found this is tends to be more even. Um but you are going to be using a lot of oil if you try to do more than one of these at once. So at this point um it’s pretty much done. The breadcrumbs are nice and brown and crispy. Um this one could have probably used with some more breadcrumbs here, but that is uh that is our fault. Um, yeah. So, just putting this over there to cool off, drain out some of the oil and we’ll do that for the rest of them and we’ll be back with our big plate of rice balls. All right, so we fried the rest of the rice balls and this is what we came up with. Um, one thing we thought of while frying them was we’ve seen a lot of people online include peas in their recipe. We don’t really like peas and rice balls, but obviously you can just add them when you make the when you make these or any other rice ball. Um, another thing we noticed is we think traditional breadcrumbs, not panko, would have been better because they would have coated it better. Uh, we saw that a lot of these panko ones were falling off. Um, but I mean, they should still be tasty. Uh, just a little less bready. Um, and yeah, those are my rice balls. And I want to show you what a beautiful grandson I have. He did 99% of this himself, but I’m his sue chef, so I did whatever he tells me to do. Uh, we love doing this again today. Also, we’re in my son and my daughter-in-law’s new home in Pennsylvania, and we had such a good time. Now, we’re going to they’re going to give us dinner because we worked very hard. Uh, we want to tell you to please subscribe. I don’t know how many more we’re going to do. I’m getting a little emotional, but uh we love seeing everybody again. And please subscribe to our channel and my grandson and I going to look for more recipes. Thank you so much. We love you. Bye. Bye. Okay. All right. So now I am testing the recorder. This is a test. Hi everybody. Hello. Speak a little bit to each other. Hi everybody. Hi. Hi. Okay. Very good. Let’s see if that worked. We’ll do that. Yeah. Yeah. The rice has to be made first cuz that’s the cool. Graham, you’re going to be a little bit in the shot. So don’t pick your nose. Okay. [Music]