It even takes a special kind of rice to make risotto. The best rice for risotto is an Italian short to medium-grain rice, with varieties like arborio, baldo, and carnaroli, that can survive all that simmering without becoming mushy. Risotto rice also sheds a lot of starch while cooking, which helps create risotto’s distinctive (and delicious) creamy texture.
If you find the perfect risotto rice and put in all that work, you’re finally rewarded with a creamy dish that looks and tastes impressive. And hopefully, Gordon Ramsey will also stop shouting at you.
But how can you tell which rice is the best rice for risotto, especially since so many of the labels are entirely in Italian? Well, we spent some time cooking up a bunch of the stuff (and scanning boxes into Google Translate) to find the best risotto rice for making the perfect risotto. Here’s our picks of the best risotto rice (including the best arborio rice and more) you can find in stores and on Amazon.
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- Kroger Arborio Rice
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While you might not expect the best risotto rice to come from a supermarket brand, this arborio rice from Kroger cooked really well. It has a solid bite to it and a classic rice flavor that doesn’t overpower the rest of the dish. It’s quick to make, easy, tasty, and probably the cheapest risotto rice on this list. And it’s hard to go wrong with that.
Credit: Merc / Kroger
- Scotti Arborio Rice
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Arborio rice is the most popular risotto rice option around, with a slightly larger grain size than the other varieties and a good amount of amylopectin, the starch that boils off the grain to make the risotto “sauce.” And this one certainly gave off a nice, creamy texture that really blended well with the rest of the ingredients, while still keeping its shape.
Credit: Merc / Amazon
- Signature Select Arborio Rice
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Another store label, this Albertsons’ brand of rice has one of the best flavors I sampled. And while risotto is often more about the flavors you add to the rice (for me, it’s heaps of parmesan and mushrooms), this arborio rice is really tasty all by itself. For some reason, it was also the most filling of the bunch and a small bowl easily filled me up. So, if you regularly shop at Albertsons brand stores and you’re real hungry, this is the best arborio rice for you.
Credit: Merc / Albertsons
- Lundberg Family Farms Sustainable White Arborio Gourmet Rice
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This brand of arborio rice really emphasizes its sustainability practices with the tagline “Better the world with every bite” on every bag. (The bags also offer a velcro-style closure, which I’ve never seen on any other food product.) The rice itself cooked a little faster than the other brands, while also being a little softer. But it also gave me plenty of starch resulting in the creamiest risotto of the bunch. Overall, it’s some of the best rice for risotto—and the best arborio rice I tried.
Credit: Merc / Instacart
- GliAironi Carnaroli
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This is not only the best risotto rice on this list, but it’s also the only entry that’s not arborio rice. It’s carnaroli, a variety of risotto rice that tends to have a firmer texture and even more starch. It was definitely the firmest rice I tried, with a great al dente feel that isn’t too hard. And it was the overall tastiest of the bunch. You might not find this in your local grocery store, but it’s worth buying online if you’re really looking for the best rice for the risotto.
Credit: Merc
Best Cheap
Best Big Grain
Best Store Brand
Best for Creamy Risotto
Best of the Best
Thoughts? Questions? Complete disagreement? Leave a comment!