Bacon, Onion, and Sweet Pea Risotto

I love making risotto.  I'm not sure why I don't make it more often, I guess I just forget about how delicious it is.  People seem to think that risotto is a fancy, complicated dish, but it is quite the opposite.  Risotto is a wonderful dish because you can combine it with many different things such as; mushrooms, butternut squash, shrimp, and in this case, bacon, onion or peas.  If you've never made risotto at home, give this recipe a try - here I'll take you through step-by-step!

Bacon, Onion, and Sweet Pea Risotto

Serves 3-4

Ingredients:

1 cup Arborio Rice

4 cups chicken stock

1/2 onion, chopped (red or yellow)

4 slices bacon, cut into 1-inch pieces

1/2 cup white wine

1/2 cup frozen peas

1/2 cup parmesan + more for garnish

Directions:

 Ingredients

Get out two saucepans - one to heat your chicken stock and one for everything else.  Add stock to one saucepan and heat on medium-high.  Heat the "everything else" saucepan on medium and add bacon and saute.  Cook bacon to desired consistency and just when it is about ready add your onion.  Saute onion until translucent.  About 4 minutes. 

 Bacon and Onion cooking

Add white wine and scrape all the brown, delicious bits off the bottom of the pan.  Then add rice and mix with bacon, onion and wine mixture.

 Rice, Bacon, Onion and Wine

Cook for 2-3 minutes.  Add one ladle of stock to the rice mixture.  Once that liquid has cooked down, add another ladle, and do this until you have used all of your stock and your rice is cooked through.  Turn off the heat and add frozen peas and parmesan (stir together) - the heat from the risotto will cook the peas so they are perfectly green.  Sprinkle with more parmesan and enjoy!!

Completed Risotto

Cottage Mama's Note:  If you run out of liquid, but your rice is not finished, add additional stock or water.  Also, make sure the wine you use is a wine you enjoy drinking......"cooking wine" will not do for this recipe.