Instant Pot spicy pork and mushroom risotto (featuring gochujang)

This recipe may well "stir up" some controversy with the Italian community out there!

Now we're all familiar with risotto, the famously rich Italian dish. And indeed what's not to like? It has toasted rice, shallots, (usually) mushrooms and grated hard Italian cheese, parmigiano reggiano or gran padano cheese. You can make it with pretty much any protein you like, it's delicious and filling.

And that is great. But as someone who's made risotto a few times the traditional way, it's quite a process. You have to keep stirring the rice constantly and add liquid by the ladle until you get the right consistency on everything. Your stirring arm will hate you for it.

Also most risotto recipes out there concentrate on making traditional Italian risottos with traditional Italian ingredients. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I was thinking "how can I expand the range and make this a bit spicier than the average risotto?"

For this II took inspiration from Korean cuisine and went with gochujang. It's a spicy red pepper paste that's slightly sweetened and fermented You can find it nowadays in most grocery stores, but if you have the chance of visiting an (East) Asian grocery store you should probably get it there. It's often used as a flavor base to make a spicy sauce for korean fried chicken, but today we're going to use it to spice up our risotto.

We're also going to make it all in an Instant Pot. Because the Instant Pot cooks with pressure and not just application of heat to the bottom of a pan, it's not going to burn your rice at the bottom of the tub, and you can add your broth all at once and not worry about standing by the stove for half an hour.

Print Recipe

Prep Time 1

Cook Time 30

Total Time 1 30

Course Main Course

Cuisine Italian, Korean

Servings 4 people

Equipment

1 Instant Pot

Ingredients

2 tbsp neutral oil I like avocado oil.
1 lb pork, cut in small strips
4 shallots
1/2 lb mushrooms, quartered white button or cremini
4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced or minced
2 tbsp gochujang
1.5 cups arborio or baldo rice don't use other varieties of rice or things won't turn out well
3/4 cup white wine
3 cups chicken broth
1 cup shredded gran padano cheese
salt to taste
thyme to taste

Instructions

We're going to start by browning the pork. Set the instant pot to saute on medium heat, add some oil, and brown the meat. Don't crowd the pot or leave it to cook for too long, as the real cooking takes place later when we use pressure.
Take the meat out and set aside.
Add a bit more oil and throw the mushrooms in there. Mix the mushrooms well so they pick up the oil, add a little salt, and let the mushrooms lose moisture for 8 minutes.
Add your shallots to the mushrooms and cook until the shalot pieces are transparent, about 4 minutes.
Add the garlic to the pot and keep stirring everything for a couple of minutes.
Add the gochujang to the pot. Let it heat up a little at the bottom, and then stir it into the veggies.
Add your rice to the pot. Keep stirring so that the rice gets a little darker.
Add your wine to the mix. Deglaze the bottom of the pot, and keep stirring the rice and veg mix. Pay close attention and you'll see the wine gradually disappear as it gets absorbed into the wine.
When the wine has been absorbed, stop the Instant Pot's saute function.
Add the broth to the pot, and then add the pork. Mix it all together.
Set the Instant Pot to pressure-cook (manual) for 5 minutes at high heat.
Once the cooking time is over, do a quick release. Make sure you don't lean over the Instant Pot when you do that because you can seriously burn yourself with the steam. Open the cover.
Add the cheese to the pot, and stir everything together.
Add salt and thyme, to taste.
Now this is important -- close the cover again (tightly) and let your risotto rest for about 15-20 minutes. this will let a little heat and pressure build up again so that the tastes will be better integrated.
Open and serve.

Notes

The gochujang goes well with the pork in terms of flavor, but mostly it adds heat that will linger in your mouth for a while. It's not excessive, however -- but you can experiment with adding more or less gochujang to suit your taste.

Gochujang will also work well with chicken if you prefer that to pork. I'm much less sure how well it would work with beef.

You can also add:

some spicy peppers to add a more serious level of spiciness.
spinach or gai lan to add a bit of greens
some people suggest adding cheddar as well as parmigiano/gran padano but I wasn't sure how it was going to mesh with everything in there already, but I might give it a shot in the future.

Keyword gochujang, granpadano, mushrooms, pork, spicy, thyme