Steel-cut Oat Risotto with Chicken Peppers and Manchego

Have you had steel-cut oats yet?  If not, has someone been bugging you about it?  You should listen to that person, because they're awesome, and people say they're more healthy due to the minimal processing.  Steel-cut oats are more chewy than regular oatmeal, as they are more coarsely cut and served.  They therefore require extra cooking time, much more like a rice or barley.  So naturally, someone thought to use steel-cut oats to replace arborio or carnaroli rice in risotto, with amazing results.

Did you know that replacing you just 3 cups of gravy per day with steel-cut oats will lower your cholesterol?

For the record, a quick search online didn't conclusively prove that there are any nutritional differences between rolled oats and steel-cut oats, as both glycemic index and in nutritional value are almost identical, and I haven't seen anything on the degradation of vitamins caused by steaming and toasting the grains first.  And neither can I find any results showing that steel-cut oats are better for you than arborio rice, with the exception of 4x the dietary fiber and slightly fewer carbs per serving (27 g compared to 36 g in a 1/4 cup).  But let's go back to pretend-land where the health food industry is always right, and where we think that steel-cut oats are another of nature's new panaceas, and move on with this awesome recipe.

I followed this recipe to the letter, with the only exception of using breast meat chicken instead of dark, because that's what I had.  And I went with a 9 month aged Manchego cheese.  Manchego is a deliciously tart sheep's milk cheese with little holes in it, aged similarly to a Parmesan but not nearly as long.  The younger ones are more soft, so I went with a middle of the road aging to cut down on costs.  I think I struck the right balance.

A nice piece of 9 Manchego cheese, about to meet a painful end

Now, we're actually going to do some cooking here - this is risotto, not some slow cooker, easy-bake oven recipe where you barely do anything.  Risotto's not one of those "yes Mr. Telemarketer, I do have a few minutes to talk about my current long distance plan" kind of dishes - you need to be attentive.  In risotto, you add broth a little bit at a time while stirring constantly, helping loosen and dissolve the starches on the surface of the grains into a rich, velvety sauce.  It's the exact opposite of pasta, where you leave the stuff alone while boiling so you don't accidentally knock all of the starch into the boiling water and end up with something the consistency of wadded Wonder Bread afterwards.  Also, you're controlling the cooking amount by adding broth gradually, so you don't end up with an overly runny or dry risotto at the end.  Here, look at this:

This is a close-up wheat starch molecules from here, stained with iodine so you can see it better.  Picture these cells packed all around things like oats and rice, and essentially forming the entirety of pasta.  When exposed to water, these cells will swell and burst.  And when that happens, smaller particles in the starch (amylose) want to get out, party, and let it all hang out.

So now you've got these amylose bits swimming around, and they're long chains that unravel and get all caught up on each other, like a bunch of christmas light strands in a box despite your best efforts to the contrary.  They form a kind of web that makes for a rich, creamy texture that's, well, it's just great.  So do stir your risotto, and don't stir your pasta.  Shamelessly reproduced from here, by the way.

Steel-Cut Oat Risotto with Chicken, Red Peppers, and Manchego

Cooking Light, March 2005

Yield:  4 servings (serving size: 1 cup)

• 2 (14-ounce) cans fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth
• 2 teaspoons olive oil
• 3/4 cup finely chopped onion
• 1 large red bell pepper, chopped
• 1 1/4 cups steel-cut oats
• 1/2 cup dry white wine
• 1 cup chopped cooked dark meat chicken
• 1/2 cup (2 ounces) shredded Manchego cheese
• 1 teaspoon chopped fresh rosemary
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Gather and prepare all of your ingredients.  Bring broth to a simmer in a medium saucepan (do not boil). Keep warm.

The setup.

Here's what I took 'finely chopped' to mean.  Is that diced?  Maybe, but at least its uniform.

Heat oil in a medium sauté pan over medium heat.  Add the onion and bell pepper, and sauté for 5 minutes (don't brown).  Add the oats and cook 2 minutes, stirring constantly.  The goal is to coat the oats in the fat in the pan, and get them toasted slightly.  

Saute vegetables over medium heat, with the heated broth ready and in arm's reach

Toss the grains in the oil before deglazing.  Without supervision, this will burn like a marshmallow over an open fire.

Now to deglaze.  Stir in the white wine and cook for 2 minutes or until nearly absorbed, stirring constantly.  For me, this took about 20 seconds.

Look closely at what's going on here.  That liquid is boiling aggressively, yanking all of the little flavor bits off the pan while you stir.  And as the liquid evaporates, its flavor becomes more concentrated too.  This is deglazing.

Add the broth, 1/2 cup at a time, stirring until each portion of broth is absorbed before adding the next (about 20 minutes in total).  Keep stirring!  Towards the end this may stick, so be careful.

Here's what my risotto looked like when I felt it was done

How do you know when it's done?  Well, a little trick I learned in cooking class was this - taste your food!  Get a spoon, and put some in your mouth.  Does it feel like eating pebbles?  If not, then you might be onto something.  When you feel like it's done, turn off the heat and pull the pan to another burner.  Stir in the chicken, cheese, rosemary, and salt, and serve immediately.

Stir in the cheese, chicken, and rosemary off the heat

Serve with a nice piece of bread and a refreshing beverage