If it gets a little crusty on the bottom, just call it Italian paella. 
I like to sear some sea scallops, and then slice them up to add at the end of the cooking cycle.
I stick to Nigella’s ‘cheaters’ risotto - using orzo instead of arborio rice 
Heat garlic oil, add a packet of diced pancetta and saute till brown, dump in orzo, stir to coat, add frozen peas, stir to coat, add stock, simmer till stock has disappeared, add a knob of butter and grate over some parmesan and stir…start to finish is about 20mins (if that)
I just made some simple risotto today to go along with some braised chicken and I wanted to check my timings to make sure I wasn’t exaggerating or anything. From stock hitting the rice, it actually was about 17 minutes to when the risotto was the texture I like (very slightly firm, but cooked through.) Looking at the box of carnaroli, it gives a cooking time of 14-16 minutes, so looks like the right ballpark. I was cooking at a heat of 8/10 in a cast-iron Dutch oven.
<bolding mine>
Honestly, I’m not trying to be pedantic here, but what do you do with the rice before you add stock?
I start my timer when the rice goes in the pot. Cook 5-7 minutes to coat the rice in oil and let it pearlize. Add the cup of white wine and let it reduce, another 5 minutes. Then start adding the stock.
Even at that, at 17 minutes, my rice would probably not be done enough for my liking. So I’d cook it a little longer besides.
So a temp of about 5/10 on a large gas burner and a pan with probably a smaller bottom diameter than your dutch oven and this maybe explains why mine takes longer. <shrug>
That said, I have a very wide bottom enameled cast iron everyday pan that I tried once. I felt the liquid evaporated quicker than I liked and I went through my stock faster and left the rice a little under done (for me). Not giving up though. I have an enameled cast iron dutch oven and I’m going to try that as well, to see if there is an optimal pan that will speed the cooking closer to the mean.
All in the interest of science, and risotto!
Generally the fewer ingredients the more authentically Italian it will be.
I don’t do US cups thing I’m afraid so I will keep it just descriptive: **Lemon & Rocket Risotto. **
Prep - just juice and zest of 2 lemons.
Heat large lump of unsalted butter and some olive oil mix in a heavy frying pan
Fry finely chopped small onion, one crushed garlic clove
Add Carnaroli rice ideally but Arborio rice will do
Enough for four persons and turn up heat high to fry for 2 mins scraping constantly
Add small glass white wine and boil off
Add lemon zest
Turn down heat and start adding a hot light chicken stock a ladle-full at a time until rice is done (al dente). Texture should not be dry, when you move the pan it should just move in a wave.
Finally add mixture of butter and lemon juice and stir in to melt butter, immediately turn off heat and add Parmesan cheese and a handful of wild rocket per person and stir onto warm platter.
Serve more Parmesan at the table to individual taste.
A green salad is all you need to accompany, and a glass of white wine! Twenty five to thirty minutes from when the rice goes in is usual but it is done when al dente - if the rice does not have a bite to it you have overcooked it. Never use a lid, never stop scrapping and do not crush the rice grains - a wooden fork sometimes helps avoid that.
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I only toast the rice for a minute or so. Just enough so it’s well coated in oil or butter and warm. You just need the rice coated in the fat and hot. Toasting does add flavor, but also makes it less creamy. There are ways to get both (see here), but I personally don’t bother. (That site also advocates the more modern, just let the rice sit in the stock method rather than the traditional stir & add stock method. I’m sure their method is sound and perhaps superior, but I’ve got my way down and I’m not about to change.
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For the basic risotto, I don’t use wine. (If I have it around, I’ll use it, but it’s not absolutely required, and for a quick weeknight risotto, I don’t bother.)
(Both of those are the same as Hazan’s technique for basic risotto in her book, but I didn’t pick that up specifically from her.)
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Cook away! Always have more stock than you think you will need on hand. I’m guessing 3-3.5x to the rice. I don’t measure–I just make sure I have a good bit more than I think I’ll need. (I almost always make risotto when I have a big pot of freshly made stock lying around that I want to use, so there’s never any worry about not having enough.)
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Rice for me is done when there’s no uncooked white rice texture left in the center of the grain. Risotto should be neither be clumpy nor soup. It should kind of “crawl” along your plate when tilted. I think the above website uses the description of flowing like lava.
And that’s it for me. Give the Food Labs recipe a shot. It may not be the traditional method, but I’d like to hear how well it compares. Knowing that website, I’m sure it’s compares very well.
Oh - and never add cream and definitely never eggs or egg yolks.
It is not a risotto if you do - still could be good and to your taste but it is not a risotto.
Thanks for the link to Kenji’s blog post. Very enlightening with respect to where the starch comes from and how best to develop it. I’m a fan of Marcella as well and have one of her books. I am tempted to try the ‘dump it all in and cook without all the stirring’ method, but I’ll have to try it when my wife’s not looking. If it doesn’t turn out, I’ll never be trusted to cook risotto right in our house again. 
Dumping it all it and not stirring will turn out okay. But you will get a paella **not **a risotto.
There’s a little more to the technique and, judging by the pictures, it sure looks like risotto, not paella. A blind taste test should be in order…
It is not a paella. You’re way too hung up on definitions, for some weird reason. They aren’t correct, either.
So no true Scotsman would make risotto this way, is what I understand you’re saying? 
That’s a bit unnecessary.
Maybe “more like a paella” then as it shares with paella the key “no stirring” aspect. But I would challenge you to find an Italian who would agree that what you produce by such a method is a true risotto - and I would rather trust an Italian than you especially when you just tell me I am incorrect without any back-up.
Oh, and I’m an Englishman who happens to live in Scotland, so you shouldn’t trust me on porage making.
If the final product is indistinguishable from risotto made with the traditional method, it is still risotto. I haven’t tried it yet, so I don’t know, but it sure as heck looks like risotto in the pictures. (And it’s not completely set and forget. You do add some broth and stir at the very end of the recipe.)
There is no one true way to make risotto, and there is no set definition of the word. It isn’t nice, or accurate, to come into a thread about a particular dish and claim “that’s not risotto”. Yes it is. Words and dishes evolved before they arrived in Italy, they evolved within the borders of Italy, and they continue to evolve all over the world as we speak. If I ask an Italian in the Po River Valley, he may very well say that it’s not risotto if it isn’t made within a four-mile radius of his house. I don’t really care much what they think about English or American usage.
I do enjoy reading about traditional ways to make the dish, and I prefer the traditional Risotti in bianco versions that usually omit milk or cream. However there is a very traditional variation con agliata that contains a cream sauce that is added to the final dish. And traditional Italian spinach risotti, if ordered in Florence, usually have cream stirred into the product in the manner described by the OP.
Adding milk doesn’t automatically disqualify it from being a risotto, any more than using beef or chicken disqualifies a dish from being barbecue. Usage will always trump everything else.