Creamy risotto with fresh and wild mushrooms. Best mushroom risotto is usually made only with wild mushrooms but they can be quite costly so I also added some crimini and oyster mushrooms. Dried mushrooms are very flavorful so even if you have just a tiny bit of dried wild mushrooms you can make very flavorful stock out of them to add to your risotto. It is a perfect starchy meal for fall and your kitchen will smell great.

Ingredients (serves 2):

1 cup dry arborio rice
8-10 crimini mushrooms
1 cup oyster mushrooms
Handful of dried wild mushrooms
1 onion finely chopped
1 garlic minced
2 Tbsp olive oil
Small bunch of parsley chopped
Vegetable stock
1/2 cup white wine

First soak dry mushrooms in 1 cup of water at least 1 hour. You can leave them in water overnight. Then boil about 15 min. Take out the mushrooms and reserve the mushroom stock.

Mix in mushroom stock with vegetable stock.

Slice crimini mushrooms, separate oyster mushrooms from a stem and chop cooked mushrooms from the stock.

Have 2 skillets ready. In the first one saute  mushrooms on a Tbsp of olive oil until browned.

In the other skillet, on the rest of the olive oil, saute the onion few min, then add garlic and rice and continue frying 1 more min. Add wine and wait until all is absorbed.  Add stock but only to cover rice. Season with salt and some dry thyme. Continue cooking on a medium heat until all the stock is absorbed. Again add stock only to cover rice and wait until absorbed. Continue repeating that step until the rice is soft which should take about 20 min. Don’t live the rice alone or it will burn. Keep mixing every now and then.

By the end of cooking when you’re about to add your last portion off stock mix in mushrooms and wait until almost all is absorbed. You don’t have to wait until all is absorbed because rice will keep absorbing stock when you’ll take it out of the heat. Mix in some parsley.

I used 1L of stock (combined with mushroom stock) and it should be enough but if you’ll run out of stock you can add some hot water instead.