lgordon wrote:

JenM wrote:Happily the bells and whistles are not literal-- it does NOT BEEP when it is done. I love that.
Cheers, Jen

I love my Zojirushi but I hate the tune it plays when it starts and finishes. I can't figure out how to make it stop.

I love the tunes but there is a way to turn that feature off (or even change the tunes that are played).

=R=

I don't own a rice cooker or slow cooker, but have been considering both lately. This of course means I haven't really used either, so I was wondering if it's necessary to buy both products or if I could buy one and use it for both purposes? I live in a small apartment with little storage or counter space, so really I don't have room for either but could probably squeeze in one

Both kitchen gizmos are targeted at pretty different make-your-life-easier tasks. I can't think of too much in one that I'd do in another, just because of the time differences in cooking things.

If you are considering limited space (and time), I'd suggest a rice cooker. I had a tiny kitchen in Rogers Park for 8 years and my rice cooker got a workout many times a week. When it wasn't in use, it lived in my empty cold oven.

One thing that might sway you one way or another is to visit a bookstore and look at the rice cooker and slow cooker cookbooks. I love my slow cooker, but I find meals in the slow cooker take more planning because I tend to cook larger batches of cow/pig/chicken/etc. and consider what I'll do with the leftovers. Plus the cooking times tend to be in the 4+ hour range

With the rice cooker, I can toss a few things in and in 45 min. or less I have something tasty.

In a detailed scientific fashion I chucked a bunch o stuff in my 15-year-old+ Hitachi rice cooker and ended up with a pretty darn good meal.

Bunch o stuff included, olive oil, chopped garlic/onion/tomato, salt/pepper, cayenne pepper and a link of smoked Hungaria from Lincoln Quality Meat Market. Added water, clicked the rice cooker to full speed ahead and waited 10-minutes after the bell dinged to open.

Not all that pretty, but simple, cheap and tasty.



Enjoy,
Gary

Lincoln Quality Meat Market
4661 N Lincoln Ave
Chicago, IL 60628
773-561-4750

G Wiv wrote:Bunch o stuff included, olive oil, chopped garlic/onion/tomato, salt/pepper, cayenne pepper and a link of smoked Hungaria from Lincoln Quality Meat Market. Added water...

Sounds tasty. Sub chicken stock for water and you'll be thrilled with the result. (Love my rice cooker.)

The bunch o stuff also included cooked rice, correct?

Or is instant rice done in 10 minutes? (forgive me, I know nothing about instant rice)

gastro gnome wrote:The bunch o stuff also included cooked rice, correct?

Or is instant rice done in 10 minutes? (forgive me, I know nothing about instant rice)

Don't want to speak for GWiv, but I assume uncooked (not instant) rice.

He said: "waited 10-minutes after the bell dinged to open," not "only took 10 minutes to cook."

RAB wrote:He said: "waited 10-minutes after the bell dinged to open," not "only took 10 minutes to cook."

RAB is correct, I started with raw long grain rice and, after the rice cooker indicated (ding) the rice was done waited, as is my custom with stove top or rice cooker, 10 additional minutes to open the lid.

Stock is a good idea, though this rice cooker meal was partially an exercise in quick and easy line of sight cooking.

Enjoy,
Gary

That's what happens when you read too quickly.

Another thing the rice cooker is begging to do for you is to rehydrate some goodies. Throw in dried shiitakes or porcinis with your ingredients and you've just magically made mushroom broth. Throw in raisins/cranberries with oatmeal or, I don't know, chopped up dried apricots with rice pudding and you've got some floating fruity orbs in suspension.

Depending on the volume of dried material, you might need to adjust your water accordingly.

This thread inspired me to finally buy a rice cooker (petermavrik, thanks for the advice between the rice cooker and slow-cooker), which I broke in this afternoon (made brown rice with chicken, mushrooms and peas). It was delicious and easy, although not necessarily fast - the rice cooker I bought has a separate button for brown rice which took 1 hr 45 min, essentially the entire second half of the Bears game. I wonder if brown rice would cook just as well but faster if I pressed the other button instead?

Regardless, I'm excited to try out other recipes and use the steamer function.

Still waiting to buy a rice cooker - but I've tried shortcuts with brown rice and trust me, they don't work. I think the shortest recipe I found takes an hour in the oven. Best bet is cook a lot and freeze some...

That's interesting (brown rice) because our old (dead) rice cooker just had ON and WARM. You pressed it to on, it popped over to warm when it was done. There was no fuzzy logic or anything, it just seemed to sense via temperature when it was done. Brown rice took longer than white, but anything I cooked in it (other grains, etc) just seemed to work. I think it sensed when the last of the water had steamed out and the bottom started to really heat up.

How stuff works wrote:At sea level, the boiling temperature for water is 212 degrees F or 100 degrees C. As soon as all of the liquid water has evaporated (or, in the case of the rice cooker, as soon as all of the water is absorbed by the rice), the temperature inside the container immediately rises. The appliance has a thermostat that can detect when the temperature rises above 212 degrees F in the container, and it turns itself off.

Mhays wrote:I think the shortest recipe I found takes an hour in the oven. Best bet is cook a lot and freeze some...

Have you tried Saveur's method? It takes only 30 minutes and I've had great results with it.

http://www.saveur.com/article/food/Perfect-Brown-Rice

That's awesome, kanin! I will definitely try that next time. I'm guessing you're losing a little nutrient content, but the time savings makes it well worth it. I'd been using the Alton Brown oven method (I think Cook's Illustrated also espouses this method.) It does turn out perfect, and I managed to do it in the toaster oven, but chiselling out an hour on a school night, even hands-off, is problematic.

For the rest of you who don't have a rice cooker, for sushi rice, I use this recipe from Epicurious, which is pretty foolproof (I've never tried the accompanying recipe, just followed the method for rice) Otherwise, I've had good success with a 1:1 1/2 ratio of converted rice to liquid with the rice button on my microwave.

The only reason I might give up some real estate to a rice cooker is for the timer: so I can have fresh rice ready in the morning to make lunches for Sparky; haven't made yubo cho bap in a while because I'm too lazy to actually cook before breakfast.

The nice thing about a rice cooker is that even if it takes 90 minutes to cook your brown rice, it's 90 minutes during which you don't really have to do anything.

And even if that 90 minutes is too long an interval to endure after work, many rice cookers have timer settings that allow you choose a ready time in advance. So, if you typically get home from work at 6 and want to eat brown rice at 6:15, that can be easily accomplished.

=R=

Roger Ebert had an awesome blog post recently about his love of "The Pot." It's a funny, quirky post, and a must read!

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/11 ... .html#more

Hi,

There is a rice cooker culinary competition.

Regards,

Hi,

The last two times I made Basmati rice, it was dry. The first time, I thought perhaps I forgot to add enough water. I stirred some water in and let it cook a bit longer. The other day, I purposefully paid attention to how much water to rice I added. It came out dry once more. I fully intended to query if anyone else had issues with Basmati rice.

This evening I learned why I had an issue: my rice cooker's bowl has a pin-sized hole. About a month, a leg came off the cooker, which I propped up when I needed it. Clearly my rice cooker has given notice it plans to retire. After six years of faithful service, off to the recycling bin!

Regards,

Saw this at the very tail end of the new Ebert profile from Esquire:

Earlier today, his publisher sent him two copies of his newest book, the silver-jacketed Great Movies III, wrapped in plastic. Ebert turned them over in his hands, smiling with satisfaction — he wrote most of it in hospital beds — before he put them on a shelf in his office, by the desk he can no longer sit behind. They filled the last hole on the third shelf of his own published work; later this year, another book — The Pot and How to Use It, a collection of Ebert's rice-cooker recipes — will occupy the first space on a fourth shelf.

Boldface mine. Ebert and Achatz chatting together would make a great discussion about how to create a book about food without being able to taste it.

Hi,

Thanks!

It was clear from his blog post he has great affection and understanding of rice cookers.

I look forward to thumbing through his book.

Regards,

whiskeybent wrote:Saw this at the very tail end of the new Ebert profile from Esquire

I returned to read the complete article this evening. It is wonderful. Many lessons offered on how to live and smile through adversity.

Regards,

I thought I'd bump this thread because I broke down & bought a Zojirushi rice cooker yesterday. (I got the NS-ZCC10, with is the 5.5 cup with neuro-fuzzy logic.) I just made my first batch of rice--brown--and it tastes great. Granted, it took about an hour longer than it would take on the stovetop, but I love the fact that a) it will free up a burner, b) when it's 90' out, it won't heat up the kitchen like the stove might and c) I can start cooking rice earlier in the day--when I think about it--rather than my typical, "Oh, I want rice tonight but it's only noon," followed by, "Shoot, I forgot to make rice and now I want to eat in 15 minutes."

A few questions, etc., for those of you who have far more experience than I do with smart rice makers:
1. What's the difference between "semi-brown" and brown rice? I cooked Lundberg short-grain brown rice on the "brown rice" setting and it seemed to work. The instruction manual had a tutorial on re. how much of the bran & germ were removed to be considered semi-brown, but I'm still confused. I can't recall ever seeing anything in the stores labeled semi-brown. Will I know it if I see it?
2. Similarly, will pre-washed rice always be marked as such when I buy it?
3. Mine has fuzzy logic but is not an induction heating unit. Can I still make non-rice/porridge things with a fuzzy logic machine?

Thanks!

chgoeditor wrote:A few questions, etc., for those of you who have far more experience than I do with smart rice makers:
1. What's the difference between "semi-brown" and brown rice? I cooked Lundberg short-grain brown rice on the "brown rice" setting and it seemed to work. The instruction manual had a tutorial on re. how much of the bran & germ were removed to be considered semi-brown, but I'm still confused. I can't recall ever seeing anything in the stores labeled semi-brown. Will I know it if I see it?
2. Similarly, will pre-washed rice always be marked as such when I buy it?
3. Mine has fuzzy logic but is not an induction heating unit. Can I still make non-rice/porridge things with a fuzzy logic machine?

I can't really help with the first two questions but we use our Zojirushi non-induction to make quinoa all the time and it turns out great. But, if you leave the unit on 'keep warm' for too long after the cooking is finished, the quinoa can overbrown and burn (unlike with rice). So, after we cook quinoa, we turn the unit off and leave it closed until we're ready to eat. The quinoa stays plenty warm but doesn't scorch. IIRC, quinoa takes about 40 minutes to cook.

=R=

chgoeditor wrote:(I got the NS-ZCC10, with is the 5.5 cup with neuro-fuzzy logic.) I just made my first batch of rice--brown--and it tastes great. Granted, it took about an hour longer than it would take on the stovetop...

That's the same one I have, and FYI, while I haven't done brown rice, the quick cook setting does a really great job with white. It's easily 90% as good as the regular program, except a whole wacky load quicker. You're not sacrificing much in terms of quality for when you want or need to speed things up.

Also, it took me a year to realize that when you think about your rice at noon, you can load the thing up and program what time you'd like it done.

I am currently brining some eggs for salted egg yolks(18 days in to a 4 to 6 week process.) I was looking for methods of preparing and using(besides the obvious crab & or shrimp in salted egg yolk.....) the eggs and yolks once done. Saw a person who eats their salted egg hardboiled with their morning rice... with the Egg prepared in the rice cooker with the white rice.

Made sense gave it a try with a brown free range chicken egg:

You can also make mac and cheese in the rice cooker you dump in the raw macaroni into a cheese and cream concoction and it makes good mac and cheese. I have the recipe somewhere.

Here is a link to the recipe I have used. Note that I have used just cheddar cheese at times and it comes out good too.

http://www.food.com/recipe/rice-cooker- ... ese-386979

Fancy pants rice cooker dinner.....

Cathy2, probably too late since you said you recycled your rice cooker, but I repaired mine, it had a hole on the bottom, with some aluminum tape. Just put a square of tape on both sides of the pot and burnish it on well. It's been working fine for a few years since then (although I don't use the pot regularly). I read this happens sometimes with aluminum. It even happened to me another time with a soda can, it apparently had a hole but the pressure kept the soda from spilling out until I opened it.

excelsior wrote:Cathy2, probably too late since you said you recycled your rice cooker, but I repaired mine, it had a hole on the bottom, with some aluminum tape. Just put a square of tape on both sides of the pot and burnish it on well. It's been working fine for a few years since then (although I don't use the pot regularly). I read this happens sometimes with aluminum. It even happened to me another time with a soda can, it apparently had a hole but the pressure kept the soda from spilling out until I opened it.

For the next time I get a pin hole leak.

Thanks!

Regards,
Cathy2