Sunday, March 21, 2010

Food Experiments: Slow Cooker Risotto

I don't think I've ever had risotto before, so I can't really judge if the recipe I made just turned out badly or if I just don't like risotto. Either way, I now have a big container of weird cheesy rice mush in my fridge that I've been trying to convince myself I should eat for about three days now. I hate wasting perfectly good food, and this really isn't that bad, but...it just reminds me of overcooked cheesy oatmeal. And when I have other, perfectly appetizing food around (even if it is Kraft mac and cheese or something that will take me another hour to cook), that somehow always wins over cheesy oatmeal.

I can't really pass judgement on the recipe itself for several reasons. One, I'm really not sure if I like risotto. There's a good chance that this tastes like it's supposed to and I just made an experiment that wasn't good for me. Two, I started this in a hurry after oversleeping one morning and didn't see that it was only supposed to cook for 2 hours, not 4, so it really WAS overcooked. Outside of my carelessness, though, this was a really easy recipe that was very quick to throw together in the morning. If I were to try it again, I'd make sure I was home so it didn't sit on the warm setting all day and possibly try a different type of cheese (I think mozzerella or gruyere or any other white cheese would probably work equally well and I might like the taste better). And I probably wouldn't make it for the night after a work party that was largely based around a food competition, because this just can't stack up to potato skins, homemade bread and honey butter, or mint brownies.

After this week, I'm starting to realize a little more that being a vegetarian must be hard. I'm having a really hard time finding recipes that aren't either really difficult, full of expensive ingredients, or full of eggplant and/or cabbage (yech). Hopefully next week will be a little easier!

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