Easy Mushroom Risotto with 5 tips (2025)

This recipe for an Easy Mushroom Risotto is a great place to begin your love affair with this Italian comfort food. Use the 5 tips as a bouncing board, and you’ll find yourself coming up with your own risotto recipes in no time.

Introduction

As you probably know, risotto is a traditional rice dish originating from Northern Italy.

What was your first thought when you saw the word risotto?

Time-consuming? Complicated?

A basic risotto recipe can take about 40 minutes from start to finish. In my humble opinion, that’s a reasonable investment of time for the return you will get on the taste.

There truly are infinite variations to this Italian rice dish. Two of my favorite arborio rice recipes are Spinach Risotto and Asparagus Risotto.

Today, we will be making basic mushroom risotto.

Ingredients

Aprintable recipe cardfound at thebottom of this pagehas thespecific amountsfor each ingredient. This is just a summary.

• Hot broth. Vegetable, chicken, or beef. Homemade is best. If using commercial. buy low sodium.
• Olive oil. A personal preference. Butter can also be used.
• Mushrooms.Any variety can be used… Portobello, shitakes, wild, Hen-of-the-Woods, cremini, etc…
• Shallot. It canbe replaced with an onion.
• Celery.Part of the “soffritto“.
• Garlic. Use as much or as little as you like.
• Arborio rice. High starch riceis essential to obtain that creamy texture.
• White wine. A simple dry wine works well. It can be replaced with an equal amount of stock.
• Parmesan cheese. Freshly grated is always better.
• Butter. Just a pat.
• Parsley. Italian flat-leaf and fresh is best.
• Lemon juice. Optional.
• Lemon zest. Once again optional, but a little goes a long way in brightening the dish.
• Salt and pepper. To taste.

How to make mushroom risotto

Heat your broth (3-4 cups) in a large saucepan. Maintain a low simmer throughout the whole process of making this recipe. Any basic risotto recipe requires the slow addition of a hot broth to the arborio rice so don’t skip this step.

Another important step is to prep all the vegetables. Finely chop the shallot ( 1 medium), celery (1 stalk) and garlic (2 cloves). Chop the mushrooms (about 2 cups) in ½ inch pieces as they will shrink in size once they are cooked.

Over medium-high heat, drizzle 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a saucepan or heavy-bottomed skillet.

Add the chopped mushrooms (about 2 cups) and sauté for about 5-7 minutes until softened and just browning. Transfer mushrooms to bowl and set aside.

In the same large skillet, drizzle 1 tablespoon olive oil over medium heat.

Sauté the shallot (1 medium) and the celery (1 stalk) for about 5-7 minutes until translucent. Stir frequently.

Add the minced garlic (2 cloves) and sauté for another 30 seconds while stirring constantly.

Add the arborio rice (1 cup). Stir together frequently for about 4-5 minutes. The edges of the rice should begin to turn translucent and just beginning to turn a light golden brown.

Add the white wine (½ cup) and stir constantly until almost all absorbed. This should take 30-60 seconds. Please note that white wine can be replaced with hot broth.

Stir in one ladle (about ½ cup) of hot broth into the rice mixture.

Stir every few minutes and allow the broth to be absorbed before adding more hot broth.

Repeat this procedure, stirring frequently.

Halfway through this procedure (about 8-10 minutes of adding broth and stirring) add the sautéed mushrooms.

Continue to add and stir one ladle of broth at a time.

At the end of 16-20 minutes, start tasting your risotto. The texture should beal dentebut still creamy.

Finally, add just a few more tablespoons of broth and remove the pan from the heat.

Stir in the cheese (¼ cup), butter (1-2 tablespoons) and chopped parsley (2 tablespoons).

Add lemon zest and lemon juice (if using).

Serve immediately in heated bowls with additional Parmesan (if desired).

As you can see, making risotto is really not that difficult.

Tips

Tip#1: In order to achieve a creamy mushroom risotto, you need to use short-grain rice.

Arborio rice is a popular one. (If you recall, this is the rice I used to make Creamy Rice Pudding). Other kinds of rice that are appropriate include vialone nano and carnaroli.

The short-grain absorbs a good amount of liquid without tasting like mush. Remember, to always cook risotto al dente.

Tip#2: When making your soffritto, sauté your vegetables (in this case the onions, celery and mushrooms) over medium heat until translucent.

Tip#3: Toast the short grains for a few minutes in the oil before adding the liquids.

This will enable each cup of uncooked rice to absorb up to 4 cups of hot broth. There are some recipes that will use butter as their source of fat; others will use a combination of oil and butter. I like using olive oil – it minimizes the number of saturated fats in the recipe. As usual, feel free to experiment! Do what you like best.

Tip#4: Add HOT broth to the rice. This allows for the rice to release its starch slowly, consequently allowing the rice to cook evenly.

Tip#5: When the risotto reaches the perfect texture, remove it from heat, add Parmesan cheese and enjoy!

Best risotto recipes

If you’re a risotto enthusiast or simply looking to expand your culinary repertoire, here are three more risotto recipes you might enjoy!

• Asparagus Risotto: Experience the freshness and vibrancy of spring!
• Mushroom Risotto: With sautéed mushrooms adding depth of flavor and a touch of umami, this recipe is a true delight for mushroom lovers.
• Zucchini Risotto: Tender zucchini and zucchini flowers meld perfectly with the creamy risotto, resulting in a delightful combination.

Simple mushroom recipes we love

• Marinated Mushrooms
• Veal Scaloppini
• Homemade Calzones

Recipe source

A few years ago, I bought a magazine from Better Homes and Gardens called “Cook’s Secrets”. One of my favorite recipes in this magazine is “Classic Risotto.” The title should have been simple risotto because it is such a simple recipe.

I immediately fell in love with this recipe because it does not use excessive amounts of butter or cheese to achieve that wonderful creamy texture. It really is all about the technique.

I did make a few changes to the recipe… my mom would always add celery… so that was a must for me. I also transformed the recipe in order for it to become the best mushroom risotto.

Not only is this a great mushroom risotto recipe in and of itself, but once you master it, it’ll serve as a great base for a bunch of other risotto dishes, too!

THANKS SO MUCHfor following and being part of theShe Loves Biscotticommunity where you will findSimple & Tasty Family-Friendly Recipes with an Italian Twist.

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Ciao for now,

Maria

★★★★★ If you have made this arborio rice recipe, I would love to hear about it in the comments below and be sure to rate the recipe!

Recipe

This post was originally published on January 31, 2016 and republished on May 9, 2019 with updated content, photos and a video. Thanks for watching and sharing!