RPCookin
Executive Chef
The trouble is that the way she wrote it, she mixed mug and cups with no explanation that she was using the same vessel.
Can't cook rice anymore...what gives?
- Thread starter rgm82
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The trouble is that the way she wrote it, she mixed mug and cups with no explanation that she was using the same vessel.
ricelover
Assistant Cook
A 3-cup rice cooker is small, perfect for a single or a couple. It's automatic so you don't have to wonder if it's cooked properly or not, and allows you to concentrate on the main course. Definitely used more often than a crockpot, pressure cooker, oven, blender, or food processor in our household.
GotGarlic
Chef Extraordinaire
Hi and welcome to Discuss Cooking
The microwave method is also automatic (mostly - stir once galfw) and doesn't require a separate appliance. It's worked for me for many years.
I guess I was the only one who knew what she was talking about without further clarification.
Hey, Mad Cook..we think alike.
Mad Cook
Master Chef
I guess I was the only one who knew what she was talking about without further clarification.
Hey, Mad Cook..we think alike.
I don't think my brain was working properly. Sometimes my typing fingers have a mind or my own.
erehweslefox
Sous Chef
I NEVER thought I would use a rice cooker, again, dislike single use appliances, but we got one as a wedding gift, and it has its uses. I mean use, cooking rice. It does, as everyone said make the rice you want without messing about. I also use it to steam veggies sometimes.
My problem in the apartment is I have four burners and an oven. I also have a limited amount of good pots. And rice cooking to consistency really needs a burner and a good pot with lid, so I have to use the good pots, not my stamped aluminum just used to heat up stuff go to hell pots. So both of those are tied up. It is worth the counter space (also a premium, but fungible, where the need for burners of differing temperatures is dynamic), when I am cooking an 'interesting' meal. (define that as using most of my pots, and all my burners at once, which happens with alarming regularity, need a bigger kitchen).
Given I have an electric range, and it is a crappy apartment range, so sucks, I generally have two big burners and two small, positioned one back big burner left, one front big burner right and small burners on the diagonal. At any given time if you want access to the pots, and if they have handles, one burner is not accessible. So if I have a large pot going on the back big, a skillet on the front right, and a sauce going on the back right small burner, I just don't have room for a rice pot and to still stir everything etc...
So giving over the rice to a cooker makes sense.
I do have a six cup cooker. I would find a three cup cooker small, given that I never make less than two cups, and often need four.
It lives in the appliance well, and comes out when I need rice as a side dish. If I am using rice as a side dish, I am darn well using most of my burners, and need the extra space on the range.
So when I was a bachelor, and cooking for myself, I always thought a rice cooker was an extravagance, a one ingredient device which I could replicate with a pot. I think you get inconsistent rice if you don't use a good pot with a tight cover, and I have three of those, one two small for more than a cup of rice.
It doesn't come up in, honey what do you want to eat tonight? dinner, but we had a dinner party recently with eight people, which was four dimensional chess in an apartment kitchen.. I actually plugged the rice cooker in in the bedroom, along with the slow cooker. For god's sake don't tell the landlord.
I think a rice cooker is worthwhile. I have gotten my investment back out of mine.
TBS
My problem in the apartment is I have four burners and an oven. I also have a limited amount of good pots. And rice cooking to consistency really needs a burner and a good pot with lid, so I have to use the good pots, not my stamped aluminum just used to heat up stuff go to hell pots. So both of those are tied up. It is worth the counter space (also a premium, but fungible, where the need for burners of differing temperatures is dynamic), when I am cooking an 'interesting' meal. (define that as using most of my pots, and all my burners at once, which happens with alarming regularity, need a bigger kitchen).
Given I have an electric range, and it is a crappy apartment range, so sucks, I generally have two big burners and two small, positioned one back big burner left, one front big burner right and small burners on the diagonal. At any given time if you want access to the pots, and if they have handles, one burner is not accessible. So if I have a large pot going on the back big, a skillet on the front right, and a sauce going on the back right small burner, I just don't have room for a rice pot and to still stir everything etc...
So giving over the rice to a cooker makes sense.
I do have a six cup cooker. I would find a three cup cooker small, given that I never make less than two cups, and often need four.
It lives in the appliance well, and comes out when I need rice as a side dish. If I am using rice as a side dish, I am darn well using most of my burners, and need the extra space on the range.
So when I was a bachelor, and cooking for myself, I always thought a rice cooker was an extravagance, a one ingredient device which I could replicate with a pot. I think you get inconsistent rice if you don't use a good pot with a tight cover, and I have three of those, one two small for more than a cup of rice.
It doesn't come up in, honey what do you want to eat tonight? dinner, but we had a dinner party recently with eight people, which was four dimensional chess in an apartment kitchen.. I actually plugged the rice cooker in in the bedroom, along with the slow cooker. For god's sake don't tell the landlord.
I think a rice cooker is worthwhile. I have gotten my investment back out of mine.
TBS
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If you like oatmeal, you can cook that in the rice cooker...
roadfix
Chef Extraordinaire
A rice cooker is like a coffee maker. If you use it every day it is definitely worth having it. We use our's almost daily.
Kayelle
Chef Extraordinaire
That's the most reasonable analogy I've heard about a rice cooker. In my kitchen, the only two electrical appliances with permanent counter real estate is the coffee maker and the toaster oven. I hate a cluttered kitchen.
GotGarlic
Chef Extraordinaire
Don't know if you saw my response, but cooking rice in the microwave results in perfect rice every single time. It stops cooking by itself and stays hot till you need it
Smokeydoke
Senior Cook
Me too. It's also nice because the rice keeps for a day without drying out.
Addie
Chef Extraordinaire
Sometimes my keyboard does. The keys keep slipping under the wrong fingers.
erehweslefox
Sous Chef
Yeah GG I hate my microwave, if you look at a picture of my kitchen it is way up on top of the refrigerator, I make it the most inconvenient piece of cooking gear I use, ever.
I lived in an apartment where that was the only way to cook, no range, no oven that and a hot plate.
You don't want to know what happened to the hotplate.
I learned to cook in the scouts, direct heat, campfire.
Cooking with a microwave oven, for me, feels like cheating, sketchy dorm room cookery, and those bad years where the apartment didn't actually have a stove.
I know there are a lot of reasons not to, but I hate my microwave oven.
TBS
GotGarlic
Chef Extraordinaire
Well, that's just silly
It's a tool, kind of like, let's see, a rice cooker? It has its uses. Less water use, less energy use and no heating up the kitchen are a few of its benefits. I don't really like the term cheating as applied to food preparation. Every food processing innovation has been embraced by successive generations.
Cooking Goddess
Chef Extraordinaire
I'm going to go with the idea that the real thing that is holding 'fox back from using his microwave is more "sketchy dorm room cookery, and those bad years where the apartment didn't actually have a stove" and less "cheating".
erehweslefox
Sous Chef
I'm going to go with the idea that the real thing that is holding 'fox back from using his microwave is more "sketchy dorm room cookery, and those bad years where the apartment didn't actually have a stove" and less "cheating".
Yeah got it it one CG.
There is a great degree to which you can plot on an x and y axis, how convenient a cooking device or method is say x, and how much satisfaction I get from using said device on y.
Microwave is a great tool, and I use it at times, but it rates high on convenience and utility, but very low on satisfaction. And yeah, using the microwave has bad connotations cooking wise for me.
I mean my ideal kitchen would have a microwave, maybe in a corner, but also a great wood stove with a team I hire just to cut the wood and keep it stoked just right at tall times. That is something I can get when I am rich right?
Also a brigade on call would be rather lovely.
Barring that we live in a fallen world of compromise and incremental failure. I tolerate the rice cooker, I just dislike the microwave.
BTW, all new apartment is secured. Minus, still rocking an electric range not a gas. Plus is a bit more counter space, and enough room in the kitchen to put a cabinet in to use as a pantry. I really need a pantry, particularly as I've started messing about with canning.
We could have gone extra rent for an updated kitchen, which as far as I can see only difference is granite counter tops, newer cabinets and and a built in microwave over the stove.
I'm cool without any of those three things. Cabinet layout is the same, don't care if they are fashionable in color. My counters normally are a mess, I mean once a week I take everything off and clean them very well, but aside from that they get wiped down and often are dusted with flour, have spills, etc... Plus my appliances are mismatched, and kind of beat up, end up for usual often spread about in various stages of cleaning, use, and dismemberment. Looks a little silly with fancy granite counter tops. Plus my last place in Tulsa had formica counters so old they might as well have been bakelite, they would actually *crack* if you kneaded bread to hard. And yeah, melted like a champ if you put something warmer than a tepid cup of tea on them.
Very used to using multiple cutting boards to avoid actually touching the counter. And have a motley selection of cutting boards, ranging from 'can use as a serving board at a dinner party' to, 'LORD what is that awful thing, and you cook on it? It should be bagged, tagged and sent to Walter Reed for research, and you as well as you aren't dead from fixing food on it'
So new kitchen. Bigger. Mine is way too small.
GotGarlic
Chef Extraordinaire
Oh, okay. Somehow I had gotten the impression the problem was running out of stove space. I was just trying to help you with that, since presumably you already have a microwave, and, in my experience, cooking plain white rice in the microwave is indistinguishable from cooking it on the stovetop, and I don't have to worry about scorching.
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Addie
Chef Extraordinaire
The romance of that wood burning stove is just that. A romance. We had one in the summer kitchen and it was kept going for canning almost all summer during the day. And then when we moved into the city. we had a wood burning stove with gas jets at the end for cooking. The wood burning part is what heated the apartment in the winter. Getting up in the middle of the night to keep the fire going was never any fun. There was never anything romantic about it. Just ask someone who lives in a log cabin in the far woods of Alaska.
expatgirl
Master Chef
Just a suggestion: In the past when I was short on space or all my burners were engaged, I have used both a bread machine and a rice cooker in another room....we once had a 900sq ft apt and the kitchen was barely big enough to turn around in.....plus it smells nice!
expatgirl
Master Chef
When we lived in Egypt 23 years ago we had a microwave that was not grounded...(actually quite a few things weren't grounded)..can't tell you the number of times we got shocked until we learned to open it just right......you want to talk about a hate/hate relationship......I don't know how many times I banged it after being "bitten"
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