I roasted a pumpkin the other day. It wasn’t a large pumpkin but it sure yielded a lot of flesh.
Just one quarter of roasted pumpkin goes into this little creation. The remaining pumpkin is going into another recipe that I’ll be sharing later.
If you’ve never made risotto before don’t be afraid of it. It’s actually not all that hard to do. All risotto requires is your attention and patience.
As for the type of rice to use, I used Arborio, which is easy to find at the supermarket. In doing research on how to cook risotto the vegan way, I found some sites suggested using Vialone Nano or Carnaroli rices – both of which I had never personally heard of before.
A lot of risotto recipes use butter and cheese to finish off or round out the dish, but in all honesty I don’t think it’s necessary because the method of cooking risotto makes the dish naturally creamy.
Roasted Pumpkin Risotto
- 2 cups roasted pumpkin*, cubed
- 1½ cups arborio rice
- 3-4 cups vegetable broth
- 1 small white onion, minced
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1-2 tablespoons olive oil
- 2 tablespoons vermouth or white wine
- Salt and fresh ground pepper, to taste
- Heat vegetable stock in a saucepan. Reduce heat to low and keep warm on the stove.
- Heat olive oil in a large saucepan over medium heat.
- Add onion and garlic and saute until softened.
- Add rice and stir well. Saute rice until slightly toasted, but not browned.
- Add vermouth. Stir well and let cook off.
- Reduce heat to medium-low.
- Add one ladleful of warm vegetable stock to the rice mixture. Stir well and allow liquid to absorb completely before adding another ladleful.
- Continue with this process - letting each ladleful of liquid completely absorb before adding the next - stirring often. The rice will begin to get creamy and thicken.
- After about 15 minutes, test the rice for doneness. You want the rice to be just before al dente. It should still be firm, but not really crunchy. If the rice is not yet cooked al dente you can continue adding liquid and cooking the rice. You may need to reduce the temperature slightly.
- Just before the rice is cooked add in the roasted pumpkin. Stir in gently to try to keep the texture of the pumpkin.
- Serve hot.
* Here’s how to roast a pumpkin.
I hope I did a decent job of describing how to cook this risotto. Sometimes I just wing it and try to remember after the fact how I did it. Kind of silly of me I suppose.
Yay Vancouver! I just found your site. I wonder how many of us GFV’s there are out here 🙂
I didn’t think there would be that many but I’ve been finding more and more people who are both gluten-free and vegan! Welcome, I’m glad you found my site. And it’s nice to have a fellow Canucks fan around here too. I get heckled all the time for it. 🙂