​This is the classic risotto recipe every home cook should know. Built on traditional technique—short-grain rice, gradual liquid additions, and just enough stirring—it delivers creamy, glossy risotto with a tender bite every time. We prefer using salted water for a clean-tasting risotto that highlights the flavor of the rice, but your favorite stock (chicken, seafood, mushroom, etc.) can be substituted for extra richness. Once you’ve mastered the method, you can adapt it endlessly with vegetables, herbs, cheeses, or seasonal toppings.. What is the best rice for risotto? Short-grain rice with high starch content, such as carnaroli or arborio, is best for risotto because it creates a creamy texture while maintaining a tender bite. Vialone Nano maintains an even heartier texture and works well for meat-heavy risottos. Sushi rice can be used in a pinch. Your local shop may also carry generic “risotto rice”—just ensure it isn’t instant or pre-seasoned and you should be fine.. What wine should I use? Pick a dry white wine that you like to drink. Pinot Grigio is a classic choice for risotto; its bright acidity and clean finish make it a versatile option. Unoaked Chardonnay is especially good with earthier flavorings, like mushrooms or squash.. Do you have to stir risotto constantly? No. Stirring frequently—but not nonstop—helps release starch and create creaminess without overworking the rice. That said, if you need to step away, you can add most of the liquid at the beginning, then cover the risotto with a lid and cook it on low heat. About 10 minutes before it’s done, come back and give it a good stir with a wooden spoon, adding any additional liquid as needed.. What is the ideal risotto texture? Perfect risotto should be loose enough to spread on a plate or shallow bowl slowly (the Italian term for this is all’onda). Think of it like the undulating tide on a beach. It should be creamy and cohesive, not dry and not soupy. Remove from heat just before the final addition of liquid is fully absorbed; the risotto will thicken as it rests.. Can risotto be made ahead? Risotto is best served immediately, but leftovers can be loosened with hot liquid and reheated gently on the stove, or used to make arancini. If you need to cook a large batch in advance, prepare the risotto only halfway through, then chill and cover tightly. Reserve the remaining liquid until you’re ready to serve, and use it to gently reheat the chilled risotto and finish cooking.  

​Each month in Well Stocked, our staff shares unfussy recipe ideas that you can call upon any day of the week. Because yes, our editors love to cook, but sometimes we need to get dinner on the table 12 minutes ago. That’s when we look to pantry and fridge staples that can quickly morph into delicious meals. This month, it’s all about leftover rice.. There’s a reason fried rice recipes tell you to start with leftover rice. The time in the fridge allows the cooked grains to firm up and dry out. “[The rice] has crystallized. The starches in it have made it hard,” explains Pecking House chef and founder Eric Huang. This is a great thing for stir-frying. When slicked with oil over high heat, the morsels crisp into a textural marvel, jumping a long way from their original sticky form.. That’s one of our favorite ways to use leftover rice, but there are other fish in the sea. Pack down day-old rice in a roaring-hot skillet and you’ve got crispy rice to stretch a salad. Simmer it in bone broth until the grains fall apart and you’ve made short-cut congee. Or cover it in coconut milk instead, let that bubble away, and poof, rice pudding. Limitless options! Read on for our editors’ favorite ways to use leftover rice.. Fridge-clearing fried rice. If I have cooked rice in the fridge—almost always!—it is there to accompany an upcoming dinner. Usually a stir-fry (love this sesame tofu) or curry (love this saag feta). But if I have an awkward amount left over—often!—I’ll turn it into a fridge-clearing fried rice. Sometimes it’s ripe kimchi and crumbled tofu. Other times it’s scrambled eggs and fresh ginger, based on this cure-all recipe from cookbook author Hetty Lui McKinnon. Her trick is to finely chop the ginger instead of grating it, so there are spicy-sweet nubs in each bite. It always hits the spot. —Emma Laperruque, director of cooking. Ginger Fried Rice. You don’t need a lot of ingredients—just a lot of ginger—for this quick comfort food.. View Recipe. Dessert for one. When I’ve got one awkward scoop of rice left over, I take it as a sign from the universe to make myself dessert. I just toss the rice into a pot and drown it in coconut milk, plus an overflowing spoonful of honey and a pinch of salt. (Any milk you have on hand works.) Let the mixture heat up and break down till it resembles a custardy porridge. Top the rice pudding with whatever fresh, dried, or frozen fruit you have around. My favorite will always be tart cherries. —Kelsey Jane Youngman, senior service editor. Laotian-style crispy rice salad. When I lived in Chicago’s Lincoln Square neighborhood, I would often order from Rainbow Thai, an unassuming take-out spot. They specialize in heady Northern Thai cuisine and truly excel with their naem kao tod, a celebration of crunchy-chewy rice mixed with red curry paste, peanuts, and fish sauce. It’s been years since I’ve had the pleasure of ordering from Rainbow, but I’ve been craving those flavo  

​My life is full of screens. Most of my screen time comes from the typical tech trifecta: my phone, laptop, and television. But it creeps in from elsewhere: If I want to queue up a song in my car, I do it on the infotainment system. Going somewhere? I’ll plug the address into my GPS, and if that doesn’t work, Waze and Google Maps are back up. Even things that used to require a brief in-person conversation with a human being—signing in at the doctor’s office or ordering a coffee—require tapping, swiping, and scanning.. My kitchen, once a retreat from all that, has followed suit. I’ve always been a recipe-follower, but now instead of opening a cookbook, I pull up recipes on my computer. I’ll scroll through Apple’s podcast library to find something to listen to while I prep. Then, I’ll tell Siri to set a timer, then move on to texting or scrolling Instagram while I wait. What used to be a totally analog activity has gone almost entirely digital.. So when I got a pitch about a new mechanical kitchen timer from Caraway, I was interested for reasons that had nothing to do with timing. The tiny timer looked so simple: No screen. No Bluetooth. No app. Just a solid, weighty dial to twist, and a ticking sound that gently marks the passing time.. Caraway. Mechanical Kitchen Timer. $45. Caraway. Now, the five seconds it takes to set a timer on my phone is not the core issue behind my screen dependency. But I got one to try anyway out of curiosity. Baby steps, you know?. The design is clean but very old-school, like something you’d see in Mad Men: a smooth circular shape, easy-to-read numbers, and a satisfying resistance when you turn the dial. The stainless steel timer comes in Caraway’s core colors, including a classic cream, sage green, and mustard yellow. I chose the navy to match my favorite teapot (which also happens to be Caraway). It’s heavy enough that it doesn’t slide around the counter, or in my case, on the top lip of the kitchen stove, and small enough that it takes up barely any space at all.. Francesca Krempa  

​On a strictly economic front, it weakens the value proposition of dining out. “If you’re in a place where the wine list is extensive, and there’s a sommelier, that’s part of what you’re paying for,” says Urbina. “It’s included in the price.”. Talking about wine with an expert who hasn’t been trained on your speech and thought patterns is an investment that pays dividends too. The practice not only helps you develop your own sense of taste, but can also make it easier to find glasses and bottles you’ll enjoy in the future.. If you think about wine as another language, enlisting AI to decide what to order—quick, before the somm comes over!—is like cramming for an exam that no one is making you take. But what if you try having a conversation with a native speaker? As anyone who’s ever shopped in a Parisian market using their middle school French can attest, you tend to acquire a lot more fluency from those real-time exchanges, even (or especially) if they’re clumsy.. Good hospitality professionals aren’t judging you, either. “There’s nothing wrong with not knowing anything about wine or not knowing what to order,” says Annie Shi, the co-owner and beverage director of King and Jupiter, and owner of Lei in New York City. “That’s literally what the staff is there for.”. Unlike any AI app, a qualified somm has tasted each bottle on their list and can guide you through its nuances. For instance, maybe you’re eyeing a Georgian Saperavi to pair with your roast lamb. An AI tool can inform you that Saperavi is a tannic red. But the somm can explain why that particular, qvevri-aged bottle is softer and rounder than others.. Gradually, and then suddenly, you’ve learned about the grape variety, Georgia’s winemaking heritage, and how tannins interact with food—all without even realizing you needed to ask.. “That’s the whole point of all of this,” says Chasity Cooper, author of The Wine Conversation Generator. “It’s so important to put our phones down and actually connect with each other and learn from one another.”. After all, we could all stay at home and drink wine by the blue light of our phones. One reason we put on hard pants (MAYBE) and brave the world outside is to soak up the intangible magic of restaurants. When we give AI the night off, we get to have the sorts of experiences that no algorithm can predict. The robots in our phones could never.  

​What we love: The Tally Pro’s controls are tactile—a push of a button turns it on, tares the scale or switches modes; a twist of a dial switches between weight measurements like grams, ounces, and milliliters—something that’s a welcome change in a technological world full of tap-tap-tapping. It also has a lovely display. There are so many scales with LCD displays that it’s not only unique to find something with a small OLED screen, it’s also simply easier to read without feeling like you’re just staring at a jumble of numbers.. The Brew Assist Mode removes all the math from the pour-over brewing process. You just select the ratio of coffee-to-water (1 to 16 is a standard place to start). Then just free ground pour coffee into your Chemex, no need to measure, and the Fellow will automatically calculate the amount of water you need to use. Once you’ve brewed with the correct amount the weight will jump out in a white highlight, telling you it’s time to stop pouring.. The simple Weight Mode, generous 2,500 gram (5.5 lb.) capacity, and multiple weight measure options also make this versatile enough to function as an all-purpose kitchen scale or baking scale. The six-inch diameter elevated platform can hold a mixing bowl or container while still allowing for readability of the display.. What we’d leave: There’s no option for flow monitoring, which, in addition to the sheer size of this scale, makes it not ideal for espresso, so functionality is somewhat limited. The nearly $200 price tag isn’t eye-popping (especially compared Acaia’s Pearl pour-over sale), but it isn’t cheap either, especially if you only intend to use it for brewing coffee.. We attempted to use each of these scales for both espresso and pour-over brewing methods, and assessed them on the following:. Accuracy. We tested the accuracy of each scale, using half gram weights, checking readouts on both an empty platform and one with 100 grams of weight on the scale. Next we placed weights at the center and each of the four corners of a scale’s weighing platform to check for accuracy across the surface. We also took into consideration how quickly the scale display updated the weight and if there was any wavering between tenths of a gram. Finally, we added coffee beans, one by one until we registered a reading above zero (typically it shouldn’t take more than two coffee beans to produce a reading of 0.1 gram).. Features and Utility. We used features like timers, auto-tare, and auto-start functions to see how easily the worked into the coffee making process. We also judged the size of the scales and the weighing platforms on whether they would work best for espresso, pour-over, or equally well for both.. How clear and fuss-free were the mechanisms for turning the scale on and off and switching between modes? How functional was the scale in everyday use (could it be your main kitchen scale) and did we feel it helped us make better coffee?. Ease of use. We judged