Risoto with meat. Sauce or not??

[sirlene]

Question:

If a serve a risoto with meat, should I also have a sauce with the meat or not??

 

[french fries]

IMO you can't serve sauce with a risotto. Personally I wouldn't. I would either cut the meat in bite sizes and mix it in the risotto, or delicately sit it on top of the risotto, but I wouldn't serve a sauce. The sauce would most probably mix with the risotto and what you'd be left with would be neither creamy risotto nor luscious sauce, but a weird mix of both.

 

[dc sunshine]

What sort of meat is it?  Sliced/chopped  finely and placed over the risotto would work, but as French Fries says - no sauce.  Too much wierd mix of gloop.

 

[gennaroe]

Perhaps the most delicious risotto I've ever had was at a restaurant in Rome. It was a white risotto, primarily flavored with Castelmagno cheese, and served alongside it was a red wine reduction that had been infused with a number of spices. It was up to the diner to drizzle the reduction over top, and the dish worked extremely well. I think a risotto with meat could incorporate a sauce effectively, if done in a similar manner: rather than a loose sauce with solid ingredients, it would have to be a deeply flavorful reduction (for example a syrupy balsamic reduction),  which could be drizzled in moderation over the risotto and a relatively plainly cooked meat meat, without making the risotto runny or causing a clash of too many different flavors.

 

[bughut]

Ah! so the risotto is a sort of side to the meat?  Or do you want to incorporate the meat into the risotto?

Generally, the risotto is a meal in itself and anything else on the plate is needless.

Personally, for your needs i would serve the meat as a side.  Nosauce . For instance, seafood risotto with huge prawns in garlic butter to munch on/ Rissoto made with garlic and chicken stock with chickenwings as a side

A Risotto should IMO stand alone as a dish. I only mention additions because  you seem to need them

 

[siduri]

Traditionally, in Italian cooking, the risotto is a first course, which precedes the main course, and is served on its own. 

In the states and elsewhere, rice is a side dish, and if you think it works well with meat, who's to stop you.  I've had kebabs served on top of pilaf in a turkish restaurant, but pilaf is not creamy, it's different.  Risotto is more soupy, and would you put meat on top of thick soup? 

Anyway, my family used to make a risotto with chicken giblets (is that what you call all the organs, heart, liver, stomach, etc?) and tomato.  You cut the pieces of chicken innards (or just the livers can work) with butter and then sautee minced onion in the pan till it gets soft. 
You add the rice, stirring and letting it get sort of transparent with the butter.  Add some wine and scrape up the browned parts stuck to the pan, add some tomato - either half a small can of tomatoes or a half a cup of water or stock with a tbsp (no more!) of tomato paste, stir it down, and then add water or stock gradually as you would with any risotto. 

 

[koukouvagia]

You can do whatever you want, you live in a free country.  Just because in Italy they don't serve it with sauce doesn't mean you can't.  Try it and see if you like it.  If you like it keep doing it.  If not try another way.

I serve risotto as a side dish, along side a protein.  I'm not Italian so I have no problem breaking this cardinal rule.  Luckily all who have eaten my risotto dishes have finished their portions and seem pleased at the end of the meal.  In any case nobody has ever shown up to arrest me.

 

[sirlene]

To be honest I have always served just the risoto. Main meal, nothing else.
Besides, I eat no red meat!!/img/vbsmilies/smilies/blushing.gif
But I was talking with my friends about this subject - risoto and side meal, meat?...with sauce, no sauce? I couldn´t tell them!! Now I know!
Very good feedback from you all!!
Thanks