Mushroom Bacon Risotto

My friend Ran has made me risotto twice. Both times were so good the food went away in one night. Recently, I bought some portabella mushrooms from sam's club and some bacon. They lived in my fridge for a while until yesterday when I decided to try making risotto on my own.

For this recipe you'll need:

1 (8-16 oz) bag of grated cheese (italian varieties would do best)
1 package bacon
5-6 cups rice
3-4 large portabella mushrooms (diced)
3 quarts stock (chicken or beef, i went with chicken)
3 tbsp fresh rosemary, finely chopped
1 tbsp fresh thyme, finely chopped
6 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 onions (1 red, 1 white, diced)
salt and pepper
olive oil

Put stock in pot. Add white onion diced and portabella mushrooms. Add some pepper and maybe olive oil for flavor. Don't worry about salt for now. Let simmer until broth is nicely brown and taken up flavors of mushrooms. Take out mushrooms and onions. Broth is ready.

Take bacon, cut slices into one inch strips and toss into a frying pan (nonstick, ideally). Turn heat to med to med high. Fry until bacon fat leaks out of bacon into the pan. Take out bacon, place into bowl. Leave fat. Take rinsed rice (ideally mostly dry) and toss into bacon fat. Coat all of rice and cook slowly over heat. When everything looks dry, ladle/spoon in 1/2 - 1 cup of broth. Stir into rice. Cook until all broth gone. Repeat with another 1/2-1 cup of broth. You want just enough that every bit of rice get a little but not so much that you're rice turns mushy. It's very important your rice stays fairly dry and simply sucks in the moisture.

Note: During the cooking processes my friend Ran is often heard yelling at the rice, "Thirsty aren't you? Well, you're not getting any water. Wait wait. Ok, fine, here's some broth. But mwahahahah! You don't get enough! Yes, nice and dry and you're cook nicely." Well, something like that. He tends to sound a bit more bad-ass and less crazy.

Anyway, back to the recipe. Once the rice is cooked through (taste it to see if it feels right? should be sticky but have individual kernels and not too mushy),we can add the other stuff. If you have too much broth left, you can make another batch of rice (use olive oil since you don't have bacon fat, but bacon fat proves better flavor). If you run out and the rice isn't cooked, you can add some water or stock to cook it more. When adding the remaining ingredients, toss in the mushrooms and cooked onions first. They can afford to be soggy since they already are. Cook off excess moisture. Then, crush the bacon and add it to the rice followed by the nicely diced red onions, garlic, rosemary, and thyme. Lastly, stir in cheese until the risottos makes your mouth water. Scoop out onto bowls and serve.

Not really sure how many this serves. I think it depends on how hungry people are. :D Hope you enjoy! I think the batch I made is enough for 5-6 meals on my own. I hope.

<3
Hao

P.S. I think maybe this can be called Ran-paging Mushroom Risotto. Or something like that. Ran's random nicknames make me laugh.