Chicken risotto

Feeds 4  

Preparation time: 5 minutes

Cooking time: 30 - 40 minutes

Ingredients
150g cooked chicken, shredded 
1½ litres of chicken stock, in a pan keeping hot 
1 tbsp olive oil 
1 onion, chopped finely 
300g risotto rice 
45g butter 
50g Parmesan, grated 
Salt 
Pepper 

Method

Put the stock into a saucepan and turn on to a low/medium heat, this needs to stay hot while you cook the risotto. Heat the oil in a large dish - I use my le creuset pot but a large frying pan would also work. 

Cook the onion on a medium heat and cook until cooked and translucent-3-5 minutes.  Put the rice in and thoroughly coat with the oil and mix with the onions.  Turn up the heat to high medium, stir and cook for 30 seconds to get the rice a little toasty before adding a ladle of the hot stock. You now need to just agitate the pot and stir again - the agitation stops the need to use the spoon as much and there is less risk of breaking the grains. You now need to keep adding add a ladle of stock when the liquid all goes, the tricky thing is you don’t want it to get too dry as you don’t want it to stick.  The mixture should be just bubbling continuously.  When you are down to about a quarter of the stock remaining, add the chicken.

This process will take anywhere between 20-30 minutes depending on the rice, the pot you use and the heat.  You know it is done when you have only a ladle of stock left and the rice is just cooked through, it should not be chalky at all.  If you run out of stock you can add a little boiling water, you should not need it but if you do just add a little at a time, the water will obviously reduce the chicken flavour so you don’t want to add more than you absolutely need to. 

Take the risotto off of the heat and stir through the butter, 40g of Parmesan and the remaining stock. Check the seasoning, it should be perfect but if it is not, add a little salt. 

Cut the chicken into pieces and stir through. Serve topped with a little Parmesan and a crack of black pepper. 

Enjoy hot, risotto waits for no man ;-)