How To Make Rice Balls

I'm going to show you how to make some Italian rice balls. Really, the whole point of this recipe is you have got rice already cooked. There's a fantastic culture in Europe, not so good in England, of not wanting to waste things, so the idea is when you finish with the rice that you've done, there is a bit of leftovers.

They'll make something else with it. Well, I'm just going to show you how to cook the rice, because I can. I'm just going to throw that in the pan.

You just saw me add a bit of vegetable oil and all I'm going to do is just coat those grains of rice with the vegetable oil and just bring it up to a reasonable heat for just a few seconds longer. Now, the ratio is always two measures of water to one measure of rice, so what I'm going to do is just tip this water in here, give it a good, old mix. Now, I'm going to turn the gas down to the lowest that I possibly can and we'll leave it on there for about 15 minutes.

The key now, during the cooking process, is not to touch or mix the rice because that gets the starch going and that is what creates a really gloopy, sticky rice, so you just got to trust me on this. Just leave it on there for the next 15 minutes and we will come back to it. Well, the rice is cooked after about 15 minutes.

I just fluffed it up with a fork, left the lid on, so it kept the steam locked in and actually, you have got lovely rice that doesn't stick together. Now, over here, I am just going to take an egg yolk. That goes into my mixing bowl.

There we go, a bit of Parmesan cheese. I have got some parsley, so that goes in there, a pinch of salt. I am going to add a tiny, tiny drop of water and then I am just going to mix all of this together to form a bind.

For that bind, it has got quite a lot of flavor in it and I am now just going to add as much of this rice as I dare. Now, the good thing about cooking rice properly is it won't stick together. Add a bit more, there we go.

In fact, I am probably going to end up doing all the rice that I cooked. The next stage is to make it into little rice balls, which I am not going to do. We have taken the cooked rice, put some flavor in, and what you do now is just scrunch them into little patties, like this.

The mixture is a little bit wet so I am just going to add a bit of extra flour to it, just to help bind it together and as you can see, I was having a slight problem before but actually, I am getting a rather more cohesive rice ball now, sort of a bit like that, which is exactly what I want. I am just going to do a couple of these off camera and then we'll come back. Well, I have got my rice balls here and I am just going to repeat this process a few times, so just cover them in a bit of flour and then a bit of egg, just dust them in egg like that, and then finally, just give them a nice little roll around in some bread crumbs.

I am going to do this five times, obviously off camera now and then we'll deep fry what we've got. Though it is a bit messy here, but cookery is. I am just going to pop those in the deep fat fryer for two or three minutes and then you'll have a beautiful, cheesy rice ball so come back in a sec.

Well, those have been sizzling away now for about two or three minutes. Look, they are a lovely golden color now. All I am going to do is just lay them on a bit of kitchen towel and just give them a bit of a roll so they look real good and then plate them up.

But that is an Italian, cheesy rice ball. |Learn how to make and prepare cheesy Italian rice balls from scratch. Quick and easy! The rice balls take less then 10 minutes to make.