Spanish Rice Arancini Recipe

Earlier this week, I posted about one of my favourite spring/summer dishes: Spanish Rice.

Now we all know, that cooking the RIGHT amount of rice for a meal something that they teach in cooking master classes, because it’s nearly impossible. I’m terrible at cooking rice. I normally cook rice as if I had at least 5 more family members or if I wanted to feed the neighbours too. This also applies for risottos and Spanish rice too. And you know what dish is not very nice as a leftover? That’s right. Risotto is pretty rubbish food as a leftover as all the moisture disappears and you just left with mushy rice.  But risotto is a bit of an effort to make and . you just don’t want to waste it – nor want to eat it. So what to do with it? Well, turns out, making arancini is a perfect way to save the leftover risotto going in the bin AND they are delicious. Arancini are stuffed rice balls which are coated with bread crumbs and then deep fried. 

Food waste is a big problem, it has been recently identified as one of the 5 biggest environmental problem. So, I pledged to try my best, not to waste food. Also, I must add that these two meals were pretty cheap. A little rice, some bell peppers and and chopped tomato gave us two dinners. Pretty frugal.

Accidentally, arancini can also made with leftover Spanish rice. So that’s what I did. I used up the leftover Spanish rice (about 300 grams) and I got quite a lot of arancini balls, bit bigger than golf balls. They go well with side salad, so they made a perfect dinner. This is a vegetarian recipe, but you can skip flour and eggs as well as using vegan cheese, so you can easily turn this into a vegan meal as long as the risotto you’re using is vegan. Also, almost all kinds of risotto can work to make arancini.

All you need is:

350g leftover risotto or Spanish rice – here’s a link to the Spanish rice recipe.

2 eggs, beaten

100g flour

200g breadcrumbs 

150 ml vegetable oil

50g cheddar or any other cheese cut into small, approximately 1cm x 1cm cubes

All measurements depends on how much risotto have you got to use up.

Method:

Form little balls with your hands and put a cheese cube in the middle. Then roll them into flour then the egg wash, then . the breadcrumbs. Place them into the fridge for 30 minutes before frying, it helps them to firm them up a little more. Fry them in hot oil (I used medium heat) for about 8 minutes, turn them around half way through to make sure all sides are crispy golden brown. Serve them immediately with fresh salad – they are the best when hot. Enjoy.