Carnaroli rice substitutes

The everyday risotto rice, with a bigger, chalkier grain than carnaroli. It gives up starch quickly, so the risotto turns creamy sooner but also turns to porridge sooner, and the grains can go soft on the outside before the centre is done. The finished dish is a touch stickier and less distinct grain by grain.

Best for

risotto of any kind, rice pudding, arancini, supermarket shopping

Add your hot broth in smaller additions and start tasting at 14 minutes. Take it off the heat when it still tastes slightly underdone, because it keeps cooking while you beat in the butter and cheese.

Veneto's preferred risotto rice, and an excellent swap. Smaller and rounder than carnaroli, it cooks a few minutes faster, around 15 minutes, and gives a looser, wavier risotto, the all'onda texture Venetian cooks aim for. The bite is a little more delicate and less resilient than carnaroli.

Best for

seafood risotto, risi e bisi and other loose risottos, risotto for people who like it soupy

Because it cooks faster, hold back some broth rather than committing it all. If you want a stiffer risotto, use slightly less liquid than the recipe says.

Spanish paella rice. It absorbs a great deal of liquid, up to about three times its volume, while releasing much less starch, so the result is drier with separate, distinct grains rather than a creamy mass. It makes a good rice dish and a mediocre risotto.

Best for

paella, baked rice dishes, risotto in an emergency

If you must make risotto with it, stir more vigorously to knock starch off the grains and be generous with the butter and cheese at the end. Add roughly a quarter more broth than the recipe calls for.

A genuine emergency swap that works better than most people expect, because short-grain rice is starchy. Do not rinse it, which is the opposite of how you would normally treat it. The result is sticky rather than creamy, and the grains lose their individual definition and turn slightly gluey rather than staying separate in a silky sauce.

Best for

last-minute risotto, rice pudding, when the shop has no Italian rice

Rinsing washes away the exact starch you need, so skip it. Reduce the total liquid by about a fifth and check for doneness from 13 minutes, since it cooks faster than carnaroli.

Not a rice at all, but northern Italy makes orzotto with barley and farrotto with farro, and both are genuinely good. Nutty and pleasantly chewy, they never reach the same silky creaminess and the grains stay firmly separate. Cook time roughly doubles, to 35 to 45 minutes for barley.

Best for

hearty winter risotto-style dishes, mushroom and sausage dishes, when you want more fibre and chew

Toast the grain in fat first exactly as you would rice, then add hot broth in the same way. Barley and farro will not thicken the dish much on their own, so finish with a generous knob of butter and grated cheese.

This is the honest failure case. Long-grain rice is high in amylose and sheds almost no surface starch, so no amount of stirring will produce a creamy sauce; you will get seasoned, separate grains in a broth. It is not risotto and there is no way to make it into risotto.

Best for

a pilaf-style rice dish instead, when there is genuinely nothing else in the house

If you go this route, stop pretending and change the dish: cook the rice pilaf-style in the same flavourings, then stir in a tablespoon of mascarpone, cream or butter and plenty of grated cheese at the end to fake some richness. It will taste good and it will not look or feel like risotto.