Risotto all'Amarone is Verona's first course: Vialone Nano, Valpolicella wine reduced separately and a mantecatura with Monte Veronese. In 40 minutes.
Introduction
Risotto all'Amarone is the dish Verona introduces itself with, and it has a peculiarity no other Veneto recipe has: the wine does not sit beside the plate, it is inside it. A quarter of a litre for four people, that is a third of the bottle, which cooks down until it becomes a dark lacquer clinging to the grain. What comes out is a garnet-coloured risotto, dry, faintly bitter, a long way from the sweet, creamy risottos people usually have in mind — and that is exactly why it has to be tossed with more butter than usual.
It is a short recipe but not an easy one, and both difficulties come down to the same thing: the wine is acidic, and acid fights with starch. Rice left to cook for a long time in the wine stays hard in the centre and does not bind, because an acid environment slows the gelatinisation of the starch. The solution the Veronese kitchens use is as simple as it is decisive — the wine is reduced separately, in a small saucepan, and goes into the risotto already concentrated, in two goes. The other thing that counts is the rice: here you use Vialone Nano Veronese, grown half an hour from where the wine is made and built for this kind of cooking.
In the pan and in the glass we put the Valpolicella. For cooking, the Mezzopiano Valpolicella Ripasso Superiore by Italo Cescon is enough: it is refermented on the Amarone skins and does the same work when reduced; for drinking, the Amarone della Valpolicella D.O.C.G. 2013 by Tenuta Trabucchi, which is made at Illasi, on the hills of this dish.
The Story of Risotto all'Amarone
It is worth saying straight away, because almost nobody writes it: this is not an old dish. It could not be, given that the wine which gives it its name is a twentieth-century affair. The story they tell in the Valpolicella has it born by mistake in the cooperative cellar of Negrar, around 1936, when a forgotten barrel of Recioto is said to have carried on fermenting until all the sugar was used up: the cellarman Adelino Lucchese, tasting it, is said to have remarked that this was not an amaro but «un Amarone». Anecdote or not, the verifiable facts come afterwards — the first bottles with that name appear at the end of the Thirties, the denomination arrives in 1968 within Recioto della Valpolicella, and the DOCG of its own only in 2010.
The risotto follows on from that, in the second half of the century, when Amarone begins to make itself known beyond the Veronese country and the restaurants of the area look for a dish that tells its story at the table. Before then Verona certainly made risotto with wine, but with the wine of the house and above all with meat: risotto al tastasal, that is with the raw salami mixture, is the historic dish of the province, and remains the closest relative of this recipe. What is not recent at all, on the other hand, is the other half of the dish. Rice has been grown on the Veronese plain since the sixteenth century, when the Gonzaga and then the Republic of Venice drained the wetlands around Isola della Scala, and Riso Nano Vialone Veronese obtained PGI status in 1996, the first rice in Europe to manage it. Risotto all'Amarone is, in the end, a young dish built on two raw materials that had been in the same province for a very long time.
Ingredients
For the risotto
- Veronese Vialone Nano rice320 g
- Amarone della Valpolicella D.O.C.G. 2013250 ml
- light meat stock1200 ml
- very finely chopped white onion60 g
- butter for the soffritto30 g
For tossing
- cold butter from the fridge40 g
- grated Monte Veronese d'allevo60 g
- saltto taste
- freshly ground black pepperto taste
Nutritional Values per Serving
Values calculated from the recipe's ingredients using the CREA food composition tables, and from the labels of our products where available. They are an estimate per serving, not a laboratory analysis.
Equipment Needed
- Wide, shallow casserole with a thick base
- Small saucepan for reducing the wine
- Pot to keep the stock hot
- Ladle and wooden spoon
- Fine grater
- Chopping board and sharp knife
Tip: The wide, shallow casserole is not an affectation: the rice must lie in a layer two or three centimetres deep, or the liquid does not evaporate fast enough and the risotto boils instead of drying out. In a tall, narrow pot this dish always comes out washed out, however good the wine is.
How to Make Risotto all'Amarone — Veronese Recipe
The reduced wine
Pour the wine into a small saucepan and bring it to a simmer uncovered, over a medium heat: it must reduce by about a third, and that takes eight or ten minutes. What is left is a dark, fragrant syrup, in which colour and fruit are concentrated and the sharp edge of the acidity has been rounded off. Set it aside, kept warm. Meanwhile bring the stock almost to the boil in its pot and leave it there: from here on everything that goes into the rice must be hot.
Chef's tip: This step is the reason the risotto works. The acidity of the wine slows the gelatinisation of the starch, so rice kept for a long time in cold wine stays hard in the centre and never binds: reducing the wine first cuts right down the time the rice spends in an acid environment.
The toasting
Melt the 30 g of butter in the casserole and soften the onion over a gentle heat for five or six minutes, without letting it take colour: it should just turn translucent, nothing more. Raise the flame, tip in all the rice at once and toast it for two or three minutes, stirring, until the grains are warm to the touch and the edges turn translucent while the heart stays white and opaque. This is the moment when the outer starch seals and the grain holds its shape through the cooking.
Chef's tip: The onion must not go golden. A browned onion brings a caramel sweetness with it that turns cloying next to the reduced wine, and in a dish that plays on bitterness you taste it at once. If it takes colour too quickly, stop it with a spoonful of stock.
The cooking
Deglaze with half the reduced wine and let it dry off almost completely, stirring: the rice takes colour in a few seconds. Then carry on with the hot stock, a ladle at a time, waiting each time for it to be absorbed before adding more, and stirring without fussing. Halfway through cooking add the rest of the wine. The Vialone Nano wants fifteen or sixteen minutes from the first ladle: start tasting at the fourteenth.
Chef's tip: Keep the risotto looser than seems right to you. The Vialone Nano absorbs a great deal and goes on drinking even off the heat, so a risotto that looks perfect in the pan arrives on the plate dry and compact.
The mantecatura
Turn off the heat and wait a good minute for the casserole to drop in temperature. Add the cold butter in cubes and the grated Monte Veronese, and stir energetically — or better, shake the casserole back and forth, which is the Veronese gesture — until the risotto turns glossy and moves all of a piece. Adjust the salt, grind the pepper over it, let it rest covered for two minutes and take it to the table: it must arrive all'onda, that is, spreading out on its own when the plate is tilted.
Chef's tip: The butter is taken straight from the fridge, not left to soften. It is the jump between cold fat and hot rice that emulsifies starch and butter into a stable cream: with butter at room temperature you get a greasy risotto, not a tossed one.
Wine to Pair with Risotto all'Amarone
This is the only Veronese dish in which the pairing begins before you sit down, because the wine is already in the risotto. It is worth understanding what really stays behind, though, because it is the opposite of what people think: most of the alcohol goes off with the evaporation, while the colour, the polyphenols and the acidity remain — concentrated. A risotto all'Amarone is therefore not an «alcoholic» dish: it is a **dry, slightly astringent and faintly bitter** dish, in which the reduced tannin leaves a roughness in the mouth that the butter and the cheese of the mantecatura are there to round off. From this come two opposite demands, and the right wine is the one that holds both together. The first is **softness**: against a base that is already tannic you need a red of fruit and extract, not a nervous wine that would double the astringency. The second is **acidity**, because beneath the creaminess there is a rich first course — seventy grams of butter and the grated cheese — that has to be cleaned up at every mouthful. The popular rule «you drink the wine you cook with» works here, but not because it is a rule: it works because Amarone is by construction soft and acidic at the same time. And the practical point that nobody writes should be said straight away: there is no need at all for the bottle in the pan and the one in the glass to be the same.
The Red We Recommend
Amarone della Valpolicella D.O.C.G. 2013 — Tenuta Trabucchi — The **Amarone della Valpolicella D.O.C.G. 2013 by Tenuta Trabucchi** is the glass that closes the circle: it is made at Illasi, in the eastern Valpolicella, where Corvina, Corvinone, Rondinella and Oseleta dry in the drying lofts from September to November, losing half their weight. It is from that concentration that what is needed at table comes. The dry extract is 43,1 g/l, that is a density that stands level with a reduced risotto instead of disappearing underneath it, and the months in French oak barriques have made the tannin round — important, because an angular tannin on an already astringent dish adds to it instead of compensating. The figure that decides the match, though, is not the power: it is the 5,58 g/l of total acidity, high for the denomination, with barely 3,2 g/l of residual sugar. It means that under the 17% vol there is a blade that lifts away the butter of the mantecatura, and that the wine stays dry — a sweetish Amarone next to a risotto made sweet by rice and onion would turn cloying halfway through the plate. The limit has to be stated in full, and it is a big one: seventeen degrees on a **first course** is a lot, and at lunch, or facing a menu that carries on with a main course, this bottle is not the reasonable choice. It makes sense when the risotto is the one dish of the evening, served in small portions, and that is exactly why they do it that way in Verona. At 60 € it is a wine for a laid table: open it an hour ahead, serve it at 18-20 °C in wide glasses, and keep it away from the stove, because above twenty degrees the alcohol comes out into the open and covers the dish instead of accompanying it.
Want to know more about the grape? our guide to Amarone della Valpolicella
The Territorial Alternative
Mezzopiano Valpolicella Ripasso Superiore D.O.C. — Italo Cescon — For many tables it is the cleverer of the two pairings, and there is a technical reason that makes it the wine of this recipe even more than Amarone itself. The **Mezzopiano by Italo Cescon** is a Ripasso: after the first fermentation the wine is refermented **on the Amarone skins**, and from there it takes body, fruit in spirit and a note of cocoa. In other words it carries the same grammar the risotto has on the plate — sour cherry, plum, spice — at 13,5% vol instead of 17, with 5,50 g/l of acidity and an extract of 27-29 g/l. Hence the practical point: **it is the right wine to cook with**. Pouring 250 ml of a 60 € bottle into the pan is a gesture no Veronese cook makes, and not out of meanness — as it reduces, the wine loses precisely the nuances you pay for in a ten-year-old Amarone, while the tannin, the colour and the acidity of the Ripasso do exactly the same work in the pan. Cook with this one, and then decide whether it stays in the glass too or the Amarone arrives. Nine months in Slavonian oak and three in tonneaux leave it a balanced tannin and a savoury finish that cleans up the mantecatura well. The limit is the mirror image of the one above: if you pull the risotto very dark, reducing the wine for a long time to an almost bitter base, the Mezzopiano stands up to the comparison but shortens on the finish, and there the Amarone wins. Serve it at 18 °C, uncorked an hour ahead; at 19,80 € it is also the way to drink and cook the same idea without opening two important bottles.
Want to explore the grape variety? our guide to Valpolicella Ripasso
Craft Beer as an Alternative
Reckless Bock Beer — Norah's Farm — The beer here does not imitate the wine: it works on another axis, and on a risotto it does better than it sounds. The **Reckless Bock by Norah's Farm** is a bottom-fermented Dunkel Bock, deep copper, with a malt that the producer marks at the maximum (●●●●) and a barely hinted hop (●○○○). The caramel and dried-fruit notes that come out of it are the exact rhyme of the wine reduction on the base of the casserole — cooked, bittersweet, toasted — so the plate and the glass tell the same story instead of quarrelling. And it has an advantage that neither of the two wines has: the carbonation. A tossed risotto leaves a film of butter and cheese in the mouth that a red lifts away chemically, with acidity, while the beer carries it off mechanically, and halfway through the plate you notice it. Two limits, because the choice is less obvious than the others. The first is that 7% vol is not a light beer: it lightens things compared with the seventeen degrees of the Amarone, not compared with a pale beer to drink with a meal. The second concerns the finish — dark malt brings a bitterness of its own, and on a risotto pulled very long that bitterness adds to the bitterness of the reduced wine: if you have reduced a great deal, pour a little at a time and taste. It should be served at 8-10 °C, not ice-cold: below six degrees the caramel disappears and only the bitterness is left, which is the half that is needed least.
Want to explore the style? amber and dark beers
Serve It With
This risotto does not want a side dish, nor a cheese beside it: it is already a complete plate, and whatever you set next to it ends up quarrelling with the reduced wine. The only addition that makes sense works inside the dish, in the mantecatura, and it wants a light hand. The Black Truffle Speciality with a Butter Base by Bruno Ceccato is clarified butter from the Asiago plateau worked with black truffle of the Grappa: replacing a teaspoon of the tossing butter with it, with the heat already off, gives the risotto a note of woodland floor that belongs to the same family as the Valpolicella appassimento. A teaspoon, mind — beyond that the truffle takes over and all that is left of the wine is the colour.
The other thing that goes alongside is the grated cheese, and the choice is worth a couple of lines. Monte Veronese d'allevo is the cheese of these mountains and it has what is needed here: a decided savouriness and an almost piquant note that stands up to the tannin. Grana Padano works and is easier to find, but it is milder, and on a dish already made sweet by rice and onion it shifts the balance in the wrong direction — if you use that one, keep the pepper more generous and the wine reduction a minute longer.
Variations
- Al tastasal: the older and more rustic Veronese version. You brown 200 g of crumbled raw salami mixture together with the onion, before the rice, and reduce the wine to 150 ml because the meat already brings plenty of flavour. It is a different dish — fattier, less austere — and it takes a slightly simpler wine.
- With black truffle butter: replace half the tossing butter with a teaspoon of Black Truffle Speciality with a Butter Base by Bruno Ceccato, added with the heat already off. Use it sparingly: truffle and wine reduction are two big aromas, and beyond a teaspoon they cover each other instead of adding up.
- The next day: the leftover risotto is spread out on a plate, left to firm up in the fridge, and becomes a risotto al salto. You press it flat in a pan with a knob of butter until a crust forms on both sides, and in that version the wine comes through even more, because the residual sugar caramelises.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I really have to cook with Amarone?
No, and hardly anyone in the Valpolicella does. A reduction needs colour, tannin and acidity, and a **Valpolicella Ripasso** gives all three perfectly well, being made precisely by refermenting on the Amarone skins: the result on the plate is almost indistinguishable, while the nuances you pay for in a ten-year-old Amarone are exactly the ones the cooking destroys. The real rule is a different one: you need a structured, dry red, never a sweet or oxidised wine, and never the so-called salted cooking wines, which make the risotto inedible.
Which rice should I use for risotto all'Amarone?
**Vialone Nano Veronese PGI** is the choice of the house and also the best: a short, roundish grain that absorbs a lot of liquid and releases starch early, so it tosses easily and gives that all'onda consistency that is wanted here. It cooks in fifteen to sixteen minutes. Carnaroli works and is more forgiving — it holds the cooking even if you overshoot by two minutes — but it stays more separate and binds less, so it has to be tossed with a little more butter. Arborio, which releases too much starch, tends to go pasty under the weight of the wine.
Why did the rice stay hard in the centre?
Almost always for one reason alone: too long in an acid environment. If the wine is poured in cold and all at once, and the rice cooks in it for ten minutes, the acidity slows the gelatinisation of the starch and the grain will not open up any more, even if you carry on with the stock. Hence the separate reduction of the first step. The other two typical culprits are stock added lukewarm, which stops the cooking at every ladle, and a toasting that is too long and too fierce, which dries out the outside of the grain.
Is risotto all'Amarone alcoholic?
Far less than the colour suggests, but it is not alcohol-free and that has to be said. The retention tables most used in cooking indicate that after a quick deglazing most of it remains, while with half an hour of cooking it drops to around a third of the starting content: here, between the reduction in the small saucepan and the fifteen minutes in the casserole, what reaches the plate is a small fraction of the initial 250 ml, divided by four servings. It is still a dish I would not make for children or for anyone who avoids alcohol altogether.
Can it be made in advance?
A tossed risotto is not reheated, that is the fixed point. You can, though, do what restaurants do, that is cook it in two stages: cook the rice for about ten minutes, the deglazing with the wine included, then spread it in a thin layer on a cold tray to stop the cooking at once. When it is time to serve, put it back in the casserole, finish it with hot stock for the five or six minutes that are missing and toss it. Badly spread out, or left for more than a few hours, the rice dries out and breaks.
