Red Wine Reduction Risotto

This post appears identically on Cooking with Charles and UMN Cooks 2013.

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I decided last night that I wanted to make a wine reduction sauce. I've never done such a thing before. I worked from two recipes -- Bittman 45 and this one -- so nothing was really followed quite right... but it turned out fantastic.

Start by making six slices of bacon in a saucepan. I always cook my bacon on super low heat to squeeze out as much of the fat as possible. When the bacon is done, chop it coarsely and set it aside. Drain off most of the grease and set it aside, but leave any gross brown stuff on the bottom of the saucepan. Add one bottle (about 3 cups) of red wine and 4 cups of broth (I used vegetable bouillon cubes) to a boil in the saucepan, stirring often to loosen up the bacon goop from the bottom of the pan. You want to reduce this by about a cup and a half.



Throw 2 diced red onions into a large frying pan with a tablespoon or two of the bacon grease and sweat them until tender, about 5 minutes. Then add 2 cups of arborio rice. Cook, stirring constantly, until the rice starts to be transparent on the edges and brown just a little bit. Return the bacon to the pan.

A ladle at a time, add the wine/broth mixture to the rice. Stir each bit until it has been absorbed before you add the next. This should take about twenty minutes. Your rice will become purple. If you run out of liquid and your rice is still too al dente for your taste, add a little bit more wine from the bottle you've been drinking this whole time; we probably used an extra half cup of red wine.



Once all of the liquid is absorbed add some Parmesan cheese -- probably about half a cup loosely grated right into the pan. Stir it up, turn off the heat, and let the pan sit, covered, for about 5 minutes to make sure everything is absorbed.



Serves five as a main course.



This recipe turned out far better than I expected; I had heard that risotto was a picky thing to get right. It worked out great, though. I think next time I'll have more things mixed into it -- maybe some nuts? It would also, of course, be trivial to make this vegetarian. Rather than making the reduction in a used bacon pan, you would instead make it in a pan you just used to caramelize your onions. And the bacon grease just becomes olive oil.