Barley, Mushroom & Sweet Potato Risotto

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Barley, Mushroom and Sweet Potato Risotto Recipe

This risotto has great flavour owing to the barley and mushrooms in it. Serve sprinkled with some grated parmesan cheese.

Course Rice Dishes

Cuisine Italian

Prep Time 15 minutes

Cook Time 55 minutes

Total Time 1 hour 10 minutes

Servings 8

Calories 211kcal

Ingredients

• 2 onions (medium, chopped)
• 2 cloves garlic (chopped)
• 3 tablespoons oil
• 1.25 litres stock (5 cups)
• 1 kg sweet potatoes (peeled, diced. 2 pounds.)
• 350 g pearl barley (3/4 pound)
• 1 can mushrooms (sliced. 225 g / 8 oz tin)
• 4 tablespoons parmesan cheese
• 100 ml skim milk (3 oz)
• 1 teaspoon thyme dried
• 1 teaspoon tarragon dried

Instructions

• Bring the stock to the boil in a large saucepan (or nuke in microwave.)
• Put chopped sweet potato in Actifry pan with 2 tbsp of oil or 1 tbsp duck fat, cook for 10 minutes, add onion and garlic cook for 5 minutes, add barley cook for another 5 minutes, then add 4 cups of very hot stock all at once and cook for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, adjust liquidity to your preferences with the reserved cup of stock, add the tinned mushrooms, milk, parmesan cheese, and herbs, cook for another 5 to 7 minutes, serve piping hot.

Nutrition

Serving: 1g | Calories: 211kcal | Fat: 3.5g | Sodium: 378mg

For the stock, you can use vegetable, chicken or beef, or a mixture of those. You can also swap out a cup (8 oz / 250 ml) of the stock for a cup (8 oz / 250 ml) of white wine. The extra cup of stock is in case you want it more liquidy.

You’ll want two medium-sized sweet potatoes; that should be close enough to the 2 pounds (900g) needed. Chop the sweet potato into pieces roughly about 1/2 inch (1 cm) square.

Note, you definitely and decidely want Pearl Barley, not Pot Barley. Pot Barley will take twice as long and require twice as much stock to soften up.

Herbs substitution: try savoury, oregano, bit of sage, etc.

The tin of mushrooms can be slices or pieces.

Weight Watchers PointsPlus® : 4 per  1 cup (250 g / 8 oz) serving.

Note that because the recipe uses pearl barley, which is polished, it isn’t necessarily a whole lot more nutritious in that regard than regular risotto rice would be. But pot barley (which is more nutritious because it has the bran left on) would just take far too long; it really does need to be boiled.

* Nutrition info provided by https://caloriecount.about.com

* PointsPlus™ calculated by hotairfrying.com. Not endorsed by Weight Watchers® International, Inc, which is the owner of the PointsPlus® registered trademark.

* Actifry™ is a registered trademark of SEB, France.