Vegan Wild Mushroom Risotto

Vegan Wild Mushroom Risotto
Home Cooking



I was at the shops with a list all prepared for getting ingredients to make a salmon curry. Evidently, I got distracted (as usual) and bought 2 punnets of mushrooms: portobello and Swiss brown.

Pondering over what to do with these... I went for the obvious options: a pasta and a risotto. This is the risotto that I made. I'll post my mushroom carbonara later on.



The mushroom risotto I made has no animal products whatsoever - olive oil instead of butter, no cheese, veggie stock and soy milk at the end. You can modify this to a non-vegan version by adding butter and cheese before serving (as seen in the photo at the end of this post).

Vegan Wild Mushroom Risotto
Serves 1 for main or 2 for entree

Ingredients:

• a punnet or 2 of mixed mushrooms; I used portobello and Swiss brown. The exact quantity is not that important (I used about 400g but had left over mushroom pieces) because the mushrooms are used to make a mushroom stock rather than physically incorporated into the risotto itself
• 1/2 brown onion
• approx 500mL vegetable stock
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 cup arborio rice
• 1/2 cup soy milk

Procedure:

1. Chop the onion up finely. In a med-sized saucepan, add a bit of oil and sautee the onions until brown and soft.
2. Chop up the mushrooms finely and add it to the onion mixture.
3. Cover with vegetable stock, pop on the lid and let the mushrooms cook down on low-medium heat for 5min or so. Then, turn the heat to low.
4. In a large non-stick frying pan, heat the olive oil. Add the arborio rice and toss it around to coat. Shake the pan so that the rice ends up in an even layer across the base of the pan.
5. When the rice is evenly coated and starting to go a bit translucent, add a ladleful of the liquid from the mushroom/onion saucepan. Shake the pan a bit to 'agitate' the risotto granules. The heat should be on low-med.
6. Once that ladleful has been absorbed, repeat. Agitate the rice every now and again but don't stir as that can break up the rice.
7. The risotto is ready when the rice is tender but still has 'bite' in the center. After a while, you can add ladles of stock together with some mushroom pieces.
8. Just before the rice is cooked completely, stop adding stock. Add the 1/2 cup of soy milk, turn up the heat and shake the pan until this is absorbed.
8. The risotto should now be ready. Serve immediately! If you don't want to do the vegan thing, stir through some butter and Parmesan for extra richness. Alternatively, a bit of pepper is good too.


This risotto was really easy to make and so yummy. It's basically flavoring a veggie stock with loads of mushrooms and using that to cook the rice in. The result is super healthy, packed with flavor and simple to whip up.