Curious about differences in rice cooking
Ironchef - I don't have a rice cooker, and rice is almost a staple for our family's Sunday dinners. Can you describe the difference in taste between microawave cooked rice / rice cooker? I'm really interested to read your opinion. My family does it on the stove, cooking it in a pot, then, when the water has cooked away, moving it to a colandar and keeping it warm over a pot of boiling water while the other ingredients of the Sunday dinner finish cooking. Some in my family like rice to be "sticky" others like the grains to be elegantly separated. I only started doing it in the microwave because all my other cooking surfaces were "busy", and microwave cooking was convenient and the rice came out however I wanted it to. I only started cooking as an adult and all my cooking learning experiences were in South Africa, and we didn't have (couldn't afford!) a lot of the neat appliances that are avb. here. I developed the opinion that a rice cooker couldn't possibly be necessary, since either microwaveing or ordinary stove top cooking produced good results...that it might just be another thing marketed to unwary consumers. If I'm wrong I'd like to know.... Sandyj