TO ADEQUATELY FUEL yourself for an endurance event, it’s important to get the right foods into you.
Much of the research to date suggests your calorific intake should come from 40% carbohydrates, 30% protein, and 30% fats.
With that in mind, we’ve come up with a very simple, extremely tasty and pretty quick recipe to tend to your body’s requirements.
It’s a mushroom risotto with a parmesan cheese and is hugely popular in sports like professional cycling, long-distance running events and cross-country skiing events.
The benefits of this are it helps to replenish your muscles’ energy stores, gives muscles the necessary protein to rebuild and loads them up for the next day’s effort.
Ingredients
Risotto rice (200g per person), onions thinly sliced, garlic sliced and diced, diced (2-4cm) streaky bacon rashers, vegetable stock 500ml, mushrooms sliced, butter, parmesan cheese or grated cheddar will do fine, wedges of lemon to taste.
Method
Step 1 – Melt the butter in a medium-heat frying pan and cook the onions and garlic until they are soft.
Step 2 – Add the bacon and mushrooms and cook for around 5-8 minutes until they start to release their juices. Season with salt and pepper but go easy on the salt as the rashers contain enough of that.
Step 3 – Tip in the rice and allow it to soak up the juices there for around 2 minutes before adding in your risotto rice.
Step 4 – Add in the stock gradually, ensuring you have the texture right. It’s important to wait until the rice absorbs most of the stock before adding more. This can take up to 15 minutes but be patient.
Step 5 – Season again with salt and pepper before adding the parmesan cheese. Drizzle with the juice of lemon chunks.
Enjoy!