Black Garlic Risotto

Black garlic risotto is an umami bomb full of deep rich flavors that come from the black garlic, porcini mushrooms, and aged parmesan. All three are umami rich ingredients that help the risotto’s earthy flavors linger on your palate.
Black garlic is garlic that has been fermented, giving it a sweeter flavor and gummier texture than regular garlic. It’s an intriguing ingredient that brings subtle, complex flavors to dishes.

This Black Garlic Risotto recipe was created to be delicious and to help people understand umami as a flavor.
More About Umami
- Everything You Need to Know About Umami – One of five universal basic tastes, umami is found in ingredients and cuisines throughout the world, and for the cook who knows what theyโre doing, it can be the secret to truly delicious cooking.
- How to Cook With Umami Foods – Learn how to cook with umami foods and a few simple techniques can improve your cooking and add more umami flavor to dishes.
- Understanding Umami Flavor With a Simple Taste Test– The best way to understand what umami flavor is is to try it yourself.
The risotto highlights three ways ingredients can develop their umami flavors: fermentation enhances the garlic’s umami flavors while drying concentrates the porcini, and aging allows the parmesan to develop its umami characteristics over time.
We generally use chicken stock for this recipe, which can be replaced with a good vegetable stock to make the dish vegetarian.
The black garlic we prefer has large cloves, which are easier to work with than black garlic cloves made with regular sized garlic. In general 2 large cloves or 6 small cloves are equal to the 2 tbsps used in this recipe. You can buy black garlic in Umami’s Market.

This recipe works great as a main dish or as a side dish. If you’re serving it as a side dish, try pairing it with Roasted Greek Chicken or Sous Vide Leg of Lamb.
Making Black Garlic Risotto

Ingredients
- 1-1/2 cups Arborio rice
- 1 cup dried porcini mushrooms
- 1-1/2 cups cremini mushrooms, diced
- 1/2 cup shallot, divided
- 2 tbsp black garlic, minced & divided
- 2-1/2 cups chicken stock
- 1 cup aged parmesan
- 2 oz goat cheese
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 2 tbsp butter, divided
- 1 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp pepper
Instructions
- Start by bringing 2-1/2 cups of chicken stock and 2 cups of water to a simmer, turn the heat off and add the dried porcini and let them soak for at least 30 minutes. This helps produce a rich stock that adds umami flavor to the risotto.
- While the mushrooms are soaking, mince the shallots and garlic and dice the cremini mushrooms into bites sized pieces.
- After the porcini have finished soaking take them out of the pot and dice into bite sized pieces. Before starting the risotto, warm the stock over low heat.
- On high heat, sautรฉ 1/4 cup of shallots in the olive oil and 1 tbsp of butter, continue stirring to make sure not to burn the shallots. After a couple of minutes add the rice, continue stirring until the rice is toasted, usually 3 to 4 minutes.
- Turn the heat down to medium and start adding the stock a couple of ladles at a time, stirring continuously, waiting until almost all the liquid has been absorbed before adding more stock.
- When half the stock has been incorporated, add the porcini mushrooms and 1-1/2 tbsps of black garlic. Continue working the stock into the risotto, when almost all the stock has been absorbed, usually around 20 minutes, add the parmesan and goat cheeses, salt, and pepper.
- In a separate pan, use 1 tbsp of butter to sautรฉ the cremini mushrooms with the remaining shallot and black garlic. When the mushrooms have finished sautรฉing, stir half of them into the risotto.
- To serve black garlic risotto ladle the risotto into a shallow bowl and top with the remaining sautรฉed mushrooms and a little shredded parmesan.
Mark is an experienced food writer, recipe developer, and photographer who is also Umamiโs publisher and CEO. A passionate cook who loves to cook for friends, he can often be found in the kitchen or by the grill testing new recipes.
More Info About Mark Hinds
Learn More
Find more recipes, tips, and ideas about these techniques, ingredients, and cuisines.
Techniques:
Ingredients:
Cuisines:
Leave a Reply