Chestnut Risotto with Toma Cheese

Chestnut risotto with toma, a perfect savoury chestnut recipe for a cozy autumn night in.

Course Main Course

Cuisine Italian

Keyword autumn risotto, chestnut, chestnut risotto, risotto, toma cheese

Prep Time 10

Cook Time 30

Preliminar Step 3

Total Time 3 40

Servings people

Calories 818kcal

Author Eva | Electric Blue Food

Add the chestnuts to a bowl and submerge in cold water. Discard any floating chestnuts as those are bad. Let rest for 30 minutes. After that, drain and add chestnuts to a pot with 3 liters fresh water and 2 bay leaves. Bring to a boil, then lower to medium and gently simmer for 45 minutes.
Peel the chestnuts removing the outer and inner skins. Keep whole chestnuts in their cooking water to prevent them from drying, it will make peeling easier. Reserve a couple whole chestnuts for decoration and break the others into smaller pieces. Store airtight and refrigerated if making this step the day before.

Warm up ⅓ of the butter in a pan, add the thyme and the chestnuts. Stir in a sprinkle of salt and sauté for a couple of minutes. Remove from the heat for the time being and keep covered.
Peel and mince the shallot. Add the olive oil and ⅓ of the butter to another pan set on medium heat. Add the shallot and rice, and cook stirring often until the shallot is soft and the rice translucent, 3-4 minutes. Pour in the wine and stir to evaporate.
Add enough broth so it covers the rice and simmer on medium heat until absorbed, then add more. Keep adding broth until it gets absorbed into the rice. When the rice is al dente but the overall texture is still slightly soupy, stir in the chestnuts. Remove from the heat and stir in the diced toma and butter.
Serve the risotto and top each portion with a reserved whole chestnut, a fresh thyme sprig and a dusting of grated parmesan.

Prepping the chestnuts adds time to a recipe that would normally not take this long. But the good thing is that you can take care of the chestnuts in advance. They need to soak for a half hour, simmer for 45 minutes, and then should be peeled directly, when still warm. Peeling chestnuts is a very meditative job that can take up to an hour. So factor in about three hours for this preliminary step. Store the peeled chestnuts airtight in the fridge for one day.
If you have access to cooked and peeled chestnuts and can skip the preliminary step (maybe you've already done this before and frozen the chestnuts for later?). For this recipe you will need 200 g peeled, which is about 1 ¼ cup chopped (after reserving 3-4 for decoration).

The nutritional information shared here is obtained using an online calculator and therefore only to be used as a guideline.