Risotto: leftovers recipes!

What if today you use the meal you've left in the previous meal? The leftover can always be used to make great dishes, just change their aspect, add some ingredients and...there you have it! A completely different dish! Often it is great for us, overall when we have no time to prepare a dish right from the start. We'll keep on posting ideas, but today we'll focus on our risotto-themed articles, we've already talked about how to choose the right kind of rice, or how to cook a great saffron risotto, but today we'll deal with what to do with the delicious risotto you haven't finished.
  
It is worth mentioning that the risotto is to be eaten when served for the first time, if you reheat it, well, it will lose all its charme, and it may result too thick, even if some loves it this way...
We use the risotto in thousands recipes, and often we cook too much on purpose, to have some risotto left for our creations! Today we'll bring you just some of these ideas.


Rice is something very hard to precisely measure into portions, and risotto is no exception to that, so, when you have distributed all the risotto to your guests and you've still half of the pot full of risotto, do not despair! Put it in a tupperware, in a dish, in whatever you like most and put it into the fridge covered with a plastic wrap. In this way it will densify, thanks to the starch and the characteristic creaminess and it will be easy to work with.

                                       Risotto Croquettes

In the Italian gastronomy, we find many dishes with rice that is made up as a croquette, or a croquetas. For instance, we can find the famous sicilian "arancine", or the roman "supplì", two dishes that we'll meet in another occasion.

Croquettes made with risotto leftovers

Ingredients:

• The leftover of the risotto we prepared "yesterday" that we've kept in our fridge.
• Mozzarella fresh cheese, Edam cheese or similar cheeses, we need it to melt.
• Whatever we like, this is one of those recipes I call "bottom of the fridge"
• Breadcrumbs and eggs
• Oil to fry them

 

Our risotto croquetas ready to be fried or frozen

You can use your rice to make a croquette, or a croqueta in Spanish. Just use the rice you've left in the fridge overnight (or anyway enough time to have it densified a bit). Wet your hands with  some oil in order to be easier for us to work the rice and just take a portion of risotto and put in its interior a portion of mozzarella or a "filante" cheese. You can add peas, carrots bites, pieces of ham, prosciutto or jamon...come on, just take all these ingredients you find at the bottom of your fridge...or even outside of it! Of course, you had better to check what ingredients there were in the original risotto, for instance, our risotto was with shrimps and tuna, so we decided to add just some cheese and it was great!
Just shape the risotto into a sphere, or a football, just like a croquette. Pass it through beated eggs, then through breadcrumbs (you can do this twice in order to have a crispier crust), fry them and...there you have them!

You can freeze them too! That option is perfect to have them ready for other days...or even for days when we're in a hurry, why not? ;)

The interior of our risotto croquettes

Super yummy!

These croquettes can also be easily transformed into...meatballs! You just have to toss them in a saucy super tasty pot after you've fried them!

Crispy tart

In this other recipe, you just have to add a drizzle of oil in a pan and toss there the risotto, flat it with a spoon or a spatula in order to thin it. Toast it for just some minutes, and then turn it upside down, just like you would like with a frittata or a Spanish tortilla, and toast it on the other side.

It will result a super crispy and super tasty salted tart! Everybody loves it, from the kids to the grandpas! You can now cut it into different portions and you can even eat it with your hands...and there's nothing better than eat tasty food with hands!

A crispy risotto tart

Another idea it is to add some cheese, tomato sauce and/or other ingredients as a topping and use the "tart" as a base for our..uhm...pizza...sorta!

Thin and crispy!

You can also make some hamburger-shaped risotto leftovers, too! Just put it over a grill...I assure you that in this way kids will enjoy a lot eating things that otherwise wouldn't even think to eat. Just hide them inside your "hamburger"!

"hamburger" made with risotto leftovers

Ok, another idea we had is to make a Spanish tortilla with our risotto...just beat eggs and add the rice, or even as a filling for salted crepe, or crespelle, and there are many many ideas yet to share, I assure you!

Use your imagination, the important thing is avoid that our risotto leftovers will ever finish into garbage!


Any ideas about that? What recipe would you do with your risotto leftovers? Tell us, please!

Buon appetito !