Can you make risotto with brown rice?

Can you make risotto with brown rice? R. Florimell

Yes, but don’t tell the Italians. It would be a culinary insult. To them, risotto can only be made with short grain rice such as arborio or carnaroli, which exudes starch as it is stirred to create that lustrous, creamy sauce in which those plump little grains sit.

You can take the technique of cooking risotto and apply it to different grains, such as barley to make orzotto, or use grain-like pasta to make risoni.

You do, however, need to adjust the cooking time.

1. A simple brown rice risotto would start with cooking a diced onion in a few tablespoons of olive oil for a few minutes over medium-high heat.
2. Add a few cloves of crushed garlic, cook for a few minutes, then add 2 cups of rice.
3. Cook for a few minutes to coat the rice. Add a glass of wine and cook for 5 minutes until it has almost evaporated.
4. Add 5 cups of chicken stock, stir, bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, cover, and cook for 30-40 minutes or until rice is almost cooked through.
5. Add one more cup of hot stock, a few tablespoons of butter, and ½ cup of grated parmesan.
6. Stir. Serve.

Just don’t tell any Italian friends that you’ve made risotto with brown rice.

Can you use cheap Saxa salt instead of expensive sea salt flakes? M. Barnes

Gram for gram, all salt is practically chemically identical. Some salts made from seawater, such as Celtic salt, contain traces of magnesium and other minerals essential for human health.

But getting your average daily allowance of magnesium from salt would play havoc with the old blood pressure.

But the shape of the salt is really important to how salty it tastes to us. We cannot taste salt unless it is dissolved.

If you place a paper towel on your tongue to dry all the saliva and then drop some salt on it, you will not taste salt until your tongue becomes wet again.

So a very finely shaped sea salt flake will dissolve faster than a cube-shaped granule and therefore, the food it is sprinkled on will taste saltier faster.

Salt flakes, formed by reducing salty water until crystals form on top of the super-saturated solution, are easier to handle than fine, cheaper granules and are preferred by chefs to season dishes by hand.

But when it comes to making dishes and foods when you’re measuring out salt by weight or volume then cooking salt, or cheap iodised salt, is going to do the job and no one will know the difference.

Letters

We talked about figs a few weeks back, which inspired E. Ray to write, “I’m lucky enough to have a fig tree and an air fryer. I cook half figs skin side down on high with a little water until well caramelised. The sugar hit is sensational.”