Arancini recipes and cooking tips

Faith

I had the pleasure of trying arancini for the first time yesterday and I'm definitely going to be making them myself. Has anyone any good tried and tested recipes? Or any cooking tips for them?

nompere

I made them from some left over seafood risotto. It had prawns, mussels, smoked salmon and other goodies in it.

I don't have a deep fat fryer, and I prefer not to fry anyway, so I baked mine.

Get the risotto really cold - it just helps in the handling!

Don't make them too big - a tablespoon of cold risotto is enough.

Expect that the flour, egg, breadcrumb "experience" will be messy.

Because it was a seafood risotto, and it didn't have parmesan, I didn't bother with the usual lump of mozzarella in the middle.

They flattened out a bit in the oven, but not much. I cooked them for about 20 minutes at around 170.

They were one of the first two or three dinners I cooked for the woman who had just come into my life, and we're still together after five years.

The Niece

I've nothing constructive to add but ooohh these are amazing!! Looking up online, this recipe is the closest to the arancini that I had but it looks like there are a lot of different versions

http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/arancini-di-riso

Honey-ec

Nompere covered pretty much everything. Only bother making them when you have leftover risotto, it's really not worth the hassle of cooking a whole batch of rice especially for them (same applies to mash & gnocchi, imo).

If your risotto had big lumps of anything in it (peas, asparagus etc.) take them out, or your arancini risk falling apart.

Wet your hands before you form the balls, it'll stop the rice sticking to them.
And that's pretty much it.

Uncle_moe

http://thelobsterclub.wordpress.com/2013/06/01/arancini-fried-rice-balls/ I stole this recipe from Michael Symon's book Carnivore, worked grand