![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
One-Pot Creamy Mushroom and Spinach Orzo
Sep. 4th, 2021 08:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
monksandbonesA few years back, when one-pot pasta-and-sauce recipes were briefly popular, I was pretty skeptical of them. This recipe suggests that I was right to be skeptical. However, I bookmarked it at some point, so I must have thought it had potential, and I, you know, actually made it.
One-Pot Creamy Mushroom and Spinach Orzo.
I made the recipe basically as written, except that I used frozen instead of fresh spinach. But I also had to add a cup and a half of additional liquid to cook it as directed, because it became a solid mass before the orzo was cooked. It still wasn't cooked quite to my satisfaction when I declared it done, so the pasta ended up sticking to my teeth, and the overall effect was something I can only describe as bland and gluey. It's possible I didn't have enough cheese for the volume of pasta, hence some of the blandness, but I think the whole thing would be vastly better as a two-pot affair, with the pasta cooked separately in water, and the sauce cooked as a white sauce or an alfredo sauce with the mushrooms, spinach, and cheese. If I was making it again in a single pot, I'd probably use 1.5 cups of orzo for the amount of other ingredients, rather than 2.5 cups as suggested.
While I was eating the first serving, the rest of it seized up so completely in the pot that I had to add a further full cup of water to loosen it up enough to portion it out into servings for lunches this week, and I'll probably have to add more water when I reheat it. I've also doctored the servings with a little more salt and some lemon juice in the hopes that that perks the taste up a bit. Fingers crossed that this is one of those dishes that's better as leftovers than it is at first, because it makes a lot!
One-Pot Creamy Mushroom and Spinach Orzo.
I made the recipe basically as written, except that I used frozen instead of fresh spinach. But I also had to add a cup and a half of additional liquid to cook it as directed, because it became a solid mass before the orzo was cooked. It still wasn't cooked quite to my satisfaction when I declared it done, so the pasta ended up sticking to my teeth, and the overall effect was something I can only describe as bland and gluey. It's possible I didn't have enough cheese for the volume of pasta, hence some of the blandness, but I think the whole thing would be vastly better as a two-pot affair, with the pasta cooked separately in water, and the sauce cooked as a white sauce or an alfredo sauce with the mushrooms, spinach, and cheese. If I was making it again in a single pot, I'd probably use 1.5 cups of orzo for the amount of other ingredients, rather than 2.5 cups as suggested.
While I was eating the first serving, the rest of it seized up so completely in the pot that I had to add a further full cup of water to loosen it up enough to portion it out into servings for lunches this week, and I'll probably have to add more water when I reheat it. I've also doctored the servings with a little more salt and some lemon juice in the hopes that that perks the taste up a bit. Fingers crossed that this is one of those dishes that's better as leftovers than it is at first, because it makes a lot!
