CBA Cookery: Cheat’s Mushroom Risotto Recipe (gf)

You know those days when you just can’t be arsed? And yet your body still wants some nutrients or maybe you have tiny demanding beings you created that keep needing to be fed! Every day! What’s with this?! Anyway, sometimes it’s handy to have some more easy recipes in your repertoire so here’s my first recipe as part of ‘CBA Cookery’: Mushroom Risotto.

Both spinach and mushrooms are considered ‘superfoods’ and are high in folate and B vitamins which are important nutrients to keep our brains functioning properly. Deficiencies in these have been linked to higher rates of insomnia, fatigue and depression. They both also contain a whole shed-load of other things that are good for you too! Bonus!

Traditionally risotto involves stirring something for like 20 minutes, which is just really inconvenient when you have kids! So this is a cheating version because it involves the magic of the slow cooker, and yes, it takes a little longer, but it requires less supervision and therefore less effort.

The ingredients I use in this recipe are basic and either frozen or tinned because I find this creates less waste and therefore keeps costs down (This recipe costs about £1.50 to make!) You can of course sub these for the fresh versions or whatever you have to hand at the time. Also I’ve used a chicken stock cube in mine because that’s what we had in, but it’s totally delicious with a vegetable one to make it vegetarian. Annnd once we had no cheese so used a dollop of cream cheese instead and it was still great! It’s a forgiving recipe 😉

Cheat’s Mushroom Risotto (gluten free)

Serves 2 adults & 2 small kid portions, so maybe like 2.5 adults?! Prep time: about 2 minutes, Cook Time: 2 hrs.

Ingredients:

100g of Arborio risotto rice

Some spinach (I used 4 ‘blocks’ of frozen spinach)

1 stock cube of choice

1x tin of sliced mushrooms (yay no chopping)

500ml of boiling water (maybe more to add later)

Some cheese (I used cheddar, bonus CBA points if yours is pre-grated in a bag! Veganify with Violife ‘Original’ block)

Salt & Pepper to taste (I only used pepper as the stock cube is salty enough for us)

Method:

Basically chuck the rice, spinach, (drained) mushrooms, stock cube & boiling water in the slow cooker. Whack it up on high and leave it for about 2 hours.

After 2 hoursish you can add a bit more water if it looks a bit too stodgy, then grate or chuck in your cheese (up to you how cheesy you want it!) and add pepper (and salt if you’re using), stir it up and its ready! If you’re not eating it right now then you can pop it on low and leave it for a bit longer (but check it for water top-ups if leaving for aaages).

Enjoy your big bowl of comfort food ❤

Do you have a favourite CBA recipe in your house? Let me know in the comments 🙂

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