With a crispy shell, chewy rice and meat, and a molten cheese core, a good arancini is absolutely to die for. Luckily, they're also not too hard to make at home, especially with our authentic arancini recipe.

Have you recently been to Italy and just absolutely fallen in love with those beautiful Sicilian arancini? While you could hardly call these beautiful rice balls healthy, you most certainly could call them delicious. How are they made, though? Can you do it at home?

Learn how to make arancini with this traditional and authentic arancini recipe. If you're a fan of Italian food and want to bring a little bit of Sicily back into your house with you, we've got you covered.

While it might look like a relatively straightforward and simple food, arancini is actually a deceptively complicated and difficult food to make. There are a lot of technical skills that you will require and many ingredients and pieces of equipment you'll need to make arancini. It also takes ages, so get ready to settle in for the long-haul.

Here's the equipment you need to make arancini:

• A couple of large pots
• Grease-proof paper
• Deep-frier with a basket or a deep oil-proof pot with a basket or sieve
• Sharp knives
• Chopping board
• Flat tray
• Bowls
• Whisk
• Sieve

Keep in mind how important it is to use the right equipment when cooking this kind of food. Regarding the deep-frying equipment, you need to be particularly careful.

While there are many ingredients needed for arancini, they are not expensive or difficult to find. Most of the stuff here is pretty basic - things like minced beef and rice. Keep in mind, of course, that you can stuff them with whatever you want, so feel free to make yourself a pasta sauce and reserve some of it for future arancini. Trust us, you won't regret it!

Here are the ingredients required to make arancini:

• For the risotto:
• Arborio rice, 15 ounces
• 1 onion
• Pecorino romano, 8 oz
• Butter, 2 knobs
• Vegetable stock, 4 cups (or however much it takes)
• Ragù filling
• Minced beef, 15 oz
• Peas, 2 oz
• 1 tube tomato paste
• Soffritto (1 carrot, 1 celery stick, 1 onion)
• Mozzarella
• Bread crumbs
• 2–3 eggs
• Olive oil
• Deep fryer oil
• Salt
• Pepper

There are, ultimately, three steps to this recipe. The first is the making of the risotto, which then needs to be cooled down. After that, you need to make the filling. Once this has cooled down, the final step is constructing everything and getting it deep-fried. You're looking for a crispy finish, so, in a way, that last step is the most important.

Here's how to make arancini with ragù:

Step 1: Having chopped up your onion nice and roughly, add a healthy amount of olive oil to a pot and sauté the onion in it until golden brown.

Step 2: Once the onions are a nice, translucent golden brown color, add your vegetable stock to the mix, stirring well so it combines with the onion. Now add a little bit of that tomato paste, around two tablespoons, and one knob of butter.

Step 3: Once the butter is melted and everything is combined, add your rice to the pot and stir vigorously. Set on medium-low heat, put a lid on top, and boil (stirring regularly) until the water has all evaporated and the rice has absorbed it all. The final mixture shouldn't be creamy like risotto but instead absorbed and thick.

Step 4: Put your finished rice on a tray (lined with grease-proof oven paper) and lay it out so that it is all flat and as compressed over the bottom of the tray as possible. Once you have done that, sprinkle a heavy dose of pecorino romano over the top and put it in the fridge to cool down.

Step 5: Now make your ragù. Start with your soffrito by, in a large pot, sautéing your roughly chopped carrot, onion, and celery in olive oil. Season with a little salt.

Step 6: Once golden brown, add your minced beef and break it up as much as you can, mixing everything in with each other to make a happy little bologfamily!

Step 7: Having groaned at the awful joke I just made, add your peas and tomato paste and mix thoroughly. Sauté everything as you would when making a bolognese sauce or a standard ragù. You want a bit of char on the meat to give it a bit of a smokey flavor, but be careful not to burn it.

Step 8: Once the meat is finished, put it in a bowl in the fridge and let it completely cool down. Meanwhile, line a second tray with baking paper and chop up your mozzarella.

Step 9: Remove both your rice and meat from the fridge. Scoop up about a half handful of rice and sculpt it into your palm, forming a cup-like shape. Now add a decent amount of the meat to the center, but be careful to make sure that it's not so much that you can't close the ball.

Step 10: Add some mozzarella as well, and then close the ball up by taking another half-handful of rice and putting it over the top, closing in the sides, and rolling it in your palms until it is about the size of a cricket ball. Squeeze it as tight as you can to get rid of as much of the moisture as possible.

Step 11: Once you have rolled up all your balls, place them on the second tray and allow them to rest overnight. This firms them up and helps maintain their structural integrity during the frying process.

Step 12: Whisk your eggs in a bowl and fill a second bowl with your breadcrumbs. Set your deep-frier to about 360°F or a pot filled with neutral cooking oil to the same temperature.

Step 13: This is a basic batter; roll your balls in the egg wash so that they are fully covered, then roll them in the crumbs so that they are fully covered - easy-peasy lemon-squeezy!

Step 14: Finally, deep-fry them for about 4–7 minutes or until there's a golden brown color on the outside. Remember, you have already cooked all the ingredients, so you just need to heat up the center and get it crispy around the edges. Enjoy!

Once you have finished making your arancini, you may notice that you have leftover meat or leftover rice. Feel free to make a few smaller ones, maybe to chuck into your kid's lunch boxes as nice little nibbles for tomorrow.

So there you have it! Arancini is a complicated and somewhat difficult thing to make, but the skills themselves aren't impossible to master. Give it a go, have fun with it, enjoy yourself, and save me one too!

Arancini is a street food that originates from Sicily, made up of a rice ball that has been stuffed, crumbed, and then deep-fried. They are usually filled with ragù, as well as a large piece of mozzarella that melts inside when being deep-fried. Additionally, they come in a vast assortment of different shapes and sizes, with different fillings and variations across Italy.

It is believed that arancini first appeared in the tenth century. Sicily was, at the time, ruled by an Islamic Emirate that had its capital in Palermo. As a result, Sicily was the center of the Muslim world and even became a part of the Byzantine Empire. This could potentially explain why arancini balls typically contain beef ragù rather than some kind of pork filling.

Another explanation suggests that arancini appeared as part of the Santa Lucia Day celebrations after the mid-1600s. Occurring on December 13 each year, it celebrates the end of a severe famine in 1646. As part of these traditions, bread and pasta are not eaten.

Ultimately, whatever the real origin story of arancini, it is an absolutely delicious dish and one that'll keep you wanting more no matter how much you eat. Seriously, if you've never had one, you've gotta try the stuff.

Less known than the famous balls of Sicily, suppli is a Roman food typical of the roadside pizza stalls and restaurants that populate the vast metropolis. They are wonderful little nuggets, usually sold for around a buck each, and are the perfect lunchtime snack.

A suppli is similar to the arancini in its look and makeup - a ball of meaty rice with tomato sauce and a melty ball of mozzarella in the center. If that doesn't sound like the perfect lunch, then, honestly, we don't know what does!