Instant Pot Mushroom Risotto

Instant Pot Mushroom Risotto is a rich and delicious recipe made in your pressure cooker for an easy vegetarian dinner or decadent side dish! Seasoned with fresh thyme, Parmesan, and white wine for a completely next level flavor.

This is the perfect side dish to compliment the flavors in our Perfect Steak, juicy Baked Chicken Breasts, or Pan Roasted Pork Tenderloin. Or make it a simple vegetarian meal with a copycat Olive Garden Salad on the side.

Easy Instant Pot Mushroom Risotto Recipe

Instant Pot Mushroom Risotto takes all the fuss out of making risotto. Instead of worrying about whether your rice is cooked just right and slaving away stirring your pot of Arborio rice constantly, an Instant Pot makes wonderfully cooked risotto without the headache!

Making Instant Pot Mushroom Risotto is especially simple because an Instant Pot takes the guesswork out of getting the grains cooked just right. You seriously can make this dish in 30 minutes and it is far less labor intensive than traditional risotto!

The Instant Pot is wonderfully versatile. Most models have a variety of functions in addition to the obvious pressure cooking. There are so many amazing recipes you can make in your Instant Pot. From casseroles like Pressure Cooker Taco Mac & Cheese to staples like Pressure Cooker Chicken Recipes and desserts like Pressure Cooker Apple Crisp. The possibilities are endless. This Instant Pot Mushroom Risotto might just be my favorite of all though!

Best Mushrooms for Mushroom Risotto

Porcini mushrooms are highly regarded for their great flavor and used extensively in Italian and French cooking. However, they are not the easiest mushroom to find fresh. Their growing season is short and you don’t typically see them on grocery shelves.

Don’t despair! You can easily find dried Porcini mushrooms at your grocery store, typically on the specialty foods aisle. Ask the grocery clerk if you have trouble finding them. I found them in my small town grocery store, so I’m confident you can find them just about anywhere.

Porcini mushrooms have a nice meaty texture and add lots of great mushroom flavor to your mushroom risotto. They are closer in flavor to the wild mushrooms like morels than the sort of flavorless crimini mushrooms typically found in the veggie section.

If you can’t find any dried porcini mushrooms, I suggest the following substitutions:

• Shitake – these are easier to find nowadays and supposedly have great health properties. They have a texture and flavor similar to porcini as well.
• Portabella – You can also find Portabella mushrooms very easily these days. Make sure to cut them down to manageable slices.
• Mixed bags of wild dried mushrooms. Sometimes you can’t find dried Porcini but will find mixed bags of other wild mushrooms that work very nicely. I wouldn’t be surprised if they also include some Porcini, along with morels and Chanterelles too.

How to Reconstitute Dried Mushrooms

If using dried mushrooms, you’ll want to reconstitute, or rehydrate, them first.

1. Place dried Porcini mushrooms in a small bowl or jar and pour enough hot water over them to just cover them. Let them soak for 15 minutes. This will plump up the mushrooms as the water rehydrates them.
2. In small batches, squeeze them well with your hands to remove as much water as possible.
3. Optional: Save the water and use it as part of your broth measurement. The extra mushroom flavor from the water adds more flavor to your rice!

What Kind of Rice is Used for Mushroom Risotto?

Arborio rice is considered the perfect style of rice grain for risotto. The rice has a particularly high level of starchiness and is a short fat grain. This means that it naturally creates a creamy and saucy “gravy” when you cook it. The short plump grains have a nice dense chewiness about them too.

All that adds up to a very comforting style of rice dish. Butternut Squash Risotto is another great way to use the starchy rice.

Why Saute the Rice?

The quick saute of the rice accomplishes a few important things on the way to making the perfect risotto.

1. First, the saute helps caramelize some of the starches, so it adds extra flavor to the rice
2. Next, the saute also adds flavors from the oil or butter you use to cook it with
3. Finally, during the saute, the rice gets separated and individually coated so sticking together is much less of an issue. Especially with a rice as starchy as Arborio, this makes a big difference between nice tender rice grains and your mushroom risotto becoming mushy.

More fantastic mushroom recipes

• Stuffed Mushrooms
• Instant Pot Chicken Marsala
• Chopped Steaks with Mushroom Gravy