October is the month of pumpkins. Have I told you how versatile pumpkins are? You can use them for anything. They are good for cooking, baking, soups, cakes, dips and even smoothies. They are also great to make a salad dressing. Anyway, in this recipe, I will show you how to make a pumpkin risotto. I still had some Hokkaido pumpkin left from the day before. With adding some rice and spices, you will get a great golden risotto in only 20 minutes time.
Ingredients for four portions of pumpkin risotto:
- ½ of Hokkaido pumpkin
- 130 g rice
- 2 small onions
- 1 spring onion
- 2 tsp of Curcuma
- 2 tsp of spicy-peanut powder (optional)
- 500-700 ml vegetable broth
- 1 chili (dry or fresh)
- oregano
- salt
- 3 Tbsp of Parmesan cheese
Start with preparing the pumpkin. First of all, scrape out the seeds and fibres and wash the piece of pumpkin under warm water to clean the skin. I didn’t peel the skin off because the Hokkaido skin is not so thick while the skin of the Butternut squash needs to be removed. Once you cleaned the pumpkin, cut it into 2-3 cm big cubes. Clean and chop the onions.
Heat some olive oil in a large pan, add the onions and sauté them for ca 3 minutes or until soft and glossy. Furthermore, add the cubed pumpkin and cook for 4-5 minutes. Keep an eye on it, stirring often so that it doesn’t burn or stick to the pan. Finally, add the rice and stir until all the rice grains are coated with a layer of olive oil.
Once the rice gets shiny, pour in the warm vegetable broth (enough to cover everything that is in the pan). Give a stir, bring to boil and then reduce the heat and let it simmer. The rice will absorb the liquids. Therefore, you will need to add more broth, a little at a time (half a cup). You might not use all the broth. At the end, we want a creamy and not a watery risotto.
And also don’t forget to stir. Nobody likes it when the rice sticks to the pan, right? Stir only when needed, rather than stirring all the time and let out all the cooking steam. So the steps are: add the broth, stir, cover and repeat. Therefore, cook until almost all the liquids are absorbed. Then remove from the stove.
Overall everything should take 15 -18 minutes. Once the rice is done (a little “al dente”), stir in the oregano, chili and Parmesan and season regarding your taste.
Serve the creamy pumpkin risotto with more of Parmesan cheese on the table (you can never have enough cheese, right?) and maybe with a nice glass of white wine.
Enjoy!
