Risotto Robot: From Hand Stirring to ABB Kitchen Cells

A risotto robot sounds like a gimmick until you try to make the dish yourself. Risotto asks a cook to stand at the pan for about half an hour, add stock a ladle at a time and keep the rice moving. That kind of repetitive attention is what machines do well. This post follows the dish from Italian rice fields to the first stirring appliances, looks at the risotto robot news from October 2026, and asks where ABB robots could fit in a kitchen. ABB has no announced risotto project, so those parts are labelled as possibilities.

A plate of risotto alla milanese, the saffron rice dish of Milan. Photo: Number55 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

How rice, ladles and patience built the risotto pan

Risotto belongs to northern Italy, where rice grown in flooded paddies around Novara and the Po plain reaches the kitchen. The first recipe identifiable as risotto dates from 1809. For generations the rice came from fields worked by hand, as a 1955 Touring Club Italiano photograph of rice weeders near Novara shows. The dish inherited that labor. Nothing about it was ever meant to be quick, and the cooks who made it accepted the long wait at the stove.

Rice weeders working a paddy field near Novara in 1955. Photo: Touring Club Italiano / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The method has barely changed. The cook toasts the rice, then adds hot stock in small amounts while stirring constantly. The stirring forces the grains to rub against each other and release starch into the liquid, which gives the dish its creamy texture. Rice varieties made for risotto, beginning with Maratelli in 1914, were only developed in the 20th century. Carnaroli, Maratelli and Vialone Nano are considered the best and most expensive choices, and each rewards a cook who stays close to the pan.

Hot stock poured into toasting rice in a wide pan, the step a risotto cook repeats for half an hour. Photo: Wikimedia Commons contributor / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Machines reached the home kitchen long before robots did. Vorwerk credits its Swiss engineer Hansjörg Gerber with the first Thermomix, the VM 2000 of 1971, which heated and blended in a single pot. Later models weigh, chop, stir and heat with guided recipes. A Thermomix can stir a risotto for you, but it is a countertop appliance that still waits for a person to load it and decide what happens next. Restaurants wanted a machine that could run a whole recipe without a cook standing over it.

A Vorwerk Thermomix, the kitchen machine that heats, weighs and stirs. Photo: Jan Hagelskamp / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

What the October 2026 risotto robot news shows

On October 14, 2026, Total Food Service published episode 139 of its Virtual Breakfast Sessions, titled "A Robot That Cooks Risotto? Meet The Ferri Group." The Ferri Group is a New Jersey manufacturers' representative firm with a culinary experience center in Fairfield. The episode summary lists which kitchen jobs robots take on first, how long culinary students needed to master an unfamiliar grill, and what happens to a chef's recipe when a machine cooks it. The summary does not name the machine. A different autonomous robotic kitchen was shown to a US Army commander at Camp Walker in Korea in February 2026.

A US Army commander is briefed on an autonomous robotic kitchen at Camp Walker in Daegu, Korea, February 2026. Photo: Sgt. Deziree Keay, U.S. Army via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

One risotto robot that does exist is Al Dente from Next Robot, shown at the National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago in May 2025. The chef programs the recipe and loads ingredient feeders, and the machine then heats, stirs and adds seasonings and stock, using AI to watch inputs such as temperature. A risotto takes about 30 minutes, with water added 20 to 30 times. Next Robot says it targets fast casual restaurants, pasta bars and convenience stores. Its earlier Robby stir fry robot is already in more than 100 locations.

The gripper of the Roboeatz ARK kitchen holding a freshly cooked bowl of pasta. Photo: ABB

ABB sits one layer below products like these, supplying the arms that kitchen automation companies build on. An ABB IRB 4600 works inside the Roboeatz ARK autonomous kitchen. At BurgerBots in Los Gatos, California, an IRB 360 FlexPicker and a YuMi assemble burgers. The IRB 1200 Hygienic is aimed at food handling in quick service restaurants, kiosks and central kitchens. Risotto is a harder job because the rice must be stirred in hot liquid, but a robot arm holding a spoon tool is one route. That is a possibility, not an ABB product.

An ABB IRB 4600 robot inside the Roboeatz ARK autonomous kitchen. Photo: ABB

Where stirring kitchens go next

For homes, the near term looks like the guided cookers that already stir for you, perhaps with a pre-measured risotto kit. Vorwerk says its Thermomix TM7, launched in February 2025, drew about 860,000 orders, so demand for kitchen machines that do the stirring is real. A full robot arm in a household kitchen faces costs, counter space and safety questions that a pot with a motor avoids, and a spill on a home stove is a bigger worry than on a commercial line. Compact arms such as the YuMi show the size a future home unit might aim for.

An ABB YuMi cobot at BurgerBots in Los Gatos, California, where it helps assemble burgers. Photo: ABB

For commercial kitchens, the open question is how much of a recipe a machine can own. Next Robot's pasta unit still leaves starches and proteins for chefs to add, a typical boundary: the robot takes the long repeatable steps and people do the finishing. Teams planning a cell like this usually build and test the program first in RobotStudio before any food is involved, which saves wasted rice and ruined batches. For another rice job, see our post on the rice ball robot.

An ABB IRB 1200 Hygienic robot picking bananas, a food handling demo. Photo: ABB

Cost will decide how fast this spreads, since a kitchen must earn back the machine in saved hours. Safety is next: hot pans, steam and an arm that moves near cooks need guarding, and ABB's SafeMove is the tool used to limit speed and zones around people. Skill matters too. A recipe a cook adjusts by taste has to become a set of numbers, and some cooks will want to keep the spoon. Cleaning is a quieter problem, since a sticky rice pan has to be washed between batches. Our post on the robotic wok covers the same trade offs for stir frying.

BurgerBots founder Elizabeth Truong at her Los Gatos restaurant, with ABB YuMi robots behind the glass. Photo: ABB

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