Amazing Vegan Layered Risotto

A vegan layered risotto? Sounds weird, doesn’t it? I thought so at least when a friend challenged me to make a vegan version of this layered risotto creation he had in some restaurant in Canada. But it sounded interesting enough for me to give it a try. After playing around with it, the resulting dish quickly became one of my favourite risottos. And that friend of mine loved this recreation as well! It is hearty, sweet and savoury, filling, and nutrient-rich. And, not to forget, incredibly satisfying to cook and eat. It’s a dish you can scale up as well, I have cooked it for big get-togethers with my friends, and everybody liked it. Let’s give the layered meaty sweet potato risotto a try together.

Ingredients you need for making layered risotto:

• Risotto rice
• Sweet Potato
• Canned jackfruit
• White onion
• Garlic
• Tomato puree
• Soy sauce (or Tamari)
• Smoked paprika powder
• Flat-leaf parsley
• Olive oil
• Vegan butter substitute
• Vegan white wine
• Paprika powder
• Garlic powder
• Salt & pepper

Tips Regarding the Ingredients:

This dish will be assembled with three layers, a meaty base, a sweet-potato mash, and risotto rice.

To build the meaty base for the dish, we want to use jackfruit. I have played around with using processed meat substitutes and pulled oyster mushrooms as well, which both work fine. But jackfruit has been my favourite meat substitute in this dish by far. Its texture and natural sourness pair amazingly with the sweetness of the sweet potato. To flavour the jackfruit, we will sauté it with fresh onion and garlic and coat it with flavourful tomato puree, soy sauce, smoked paprika, paprika powder, garlic powder, cumin, brown sugar and salt and pepper. If you want to make the dish gluten-free, swap the soy sauce for tamari.

To make the sweet potato mash, we need sweet potatoes, olive oil, and salt and pepper.

For the risotto, rice, vegan butter, olive oil, white wine, and vegetable stock are the key ingredients. As always, I like making my own vegetable stock, as outlined in this recipe! Today, I used the stems of flat-leaf parsley, a piece of sweet potato, onions, garlic and a carrot. The self-made veggie stock is much better than store-bought alternatives, so make sure to give this a try. It brings your risotto to the next level!

To garnish, I am using flat-leaf parsley. As the whole dish is rather creamy, sweet and rich in taste, I like to have a fresh garnish cutting through these tastes. Other herbs could work well for this purpose too. Otherwise, the crunchy texture of vegetable chips makes an interesting topping for this dish. Thinly sliced and fried sweet potato obviously pair well with the flavour, and provide an interesting contrast in texture.

Preparing the Ingredients for Layered Risotto:

Let’s get started with the preparation: Peel your sweet potato, quarter them, and slice the quarters into finger-thick pieces. Rinse your jackfruit under cold water, and dice your onions finely. Next, crush and mince the garlic cloves. We can now work on the three layers of the risotto synonymously. This makes this dish quick to prepare but a bit more challenging because we need to coordinate all that delicious cooking. But that makes this dish fun as well! It’s pretty satisfying to get all these processes coordinated. I usually start by making the jackfruit and sweet potato mash first and the risotto a few minutes later. It is no problem to keep the first two layers warm, but you want to plate the risotto as fresh and creamy as possible.

Layer 1: The Jackfruit Meat

Take your rinsed jackfruit and pull them, by using a fork, into thin strips. Heat a pan to medium-high, add half of the diced onions, and sauté them until they start to brown. Add your garlic, and after a minute of additional sautéing, add the tomato puree. Cook for two more minutes before adding the pulled jackfruit, smoked paprika, paprika powder, cumin, cane sugar, garlic powder, and a sip of soy sauce for an umami flavour. Continue cooking until a thick sauce coats the jackfruit and the jackfruit is tender to the bite. This can well take 15 minutes. Add salt and pepper and adjust the seasoning to your liking.

Layer 2: The Sweet Potato Mash

To get a delicious mash, add your sweet potato pieces to boiling water. Add some salt, and let the sweet potato simmer until soft. You can test the consistency by poking the sweet potato with a fork. The cooking time depends a bit on the size of your sweet potato pieces and the sweet potato itself, but it should take approximately 15 minutes. Once the sweet potatoes are nice and soft, dress them generously with extra virgin olive oil, and mash them with a potato masher, ricer, or even an immersion blender. I used a potato masher today, but having a creamy, more airy mash from the blender works even better for this dish. You might need to add a bit of additional liquid when using the immersion blender, for which you can use a ladleful of vegetable stock. Season with salt and pepper, and this second layer is good to go!

Layer 3: The Risotto Rice

Add a generous sip of olive oil to your pan, and start to sauté your onions. After the onions turn translucent, add the risotto rice, and fry together with the onions for a couple of minutes. Once the rice develops a light toast, deglaze the pot with white wine, and bring it to a simmer. Stir the risotto regularly while adding ladlefuls of vegetable stock. Continue stirring the risotto in short intervals and add more vegetable stock once the rice has soaked up most of the liquid. We aim for a creamy risotto with a nice texture left in the rice. Finish the risotto by taking it off the heat, adding vegan butter and olive oil, and folding everything together nicely. Check for seasoning, and you should have a delicious risotto for the top layer of this dish!

Finish the Risotto & Plating

To plate the dish, spread out pulled jackfruit on your plate.

Next, top the jackfruit with the sweet potato mash, and spread it evenly, so it coats everything nicely.

Then, top it with the risotto rice, and distribute it until it covers the sweet potato evenly. I finished the dish with a few cracks of black pepper and the flat-leaf parsley, and that’s it!

Some more Recipe Inspirations:

• when cooking this dish for my friends, I made this creamy parsnip soup as a starter and German baked apples for dessert. It was a feast!
• Do you like risotto? This roasted pumpkin risotto is absolutely delightful!
• Check out this delicious vegan spinach risotto!