I love my rice cooker. I would not, however, have bought it myself. Lee bought it for me, and in typical Lee fashion, he bought the biggest one they had. It’s actually too big–if I had it to do over again, I’d get a slightly smaller version. This one takes up too much space in the cabinet; it’s a little bulky to move around; and I never use even a fraction of its capacity. Bigger is not always better . . .
I consider myself lucky, though–it wasn’t until after we got this rice cooker that we realized that restaurants use the same technology, just in a MUCH bigger format. The rice cookers at your average Chinese restaurant are big enough to steam a small child. I’m glad Lee didn’t know about those, or I’d be cranking out enough rice to feed the entire Tour de France. Carbs for all!
If you don’t have a rice cooker, though, you might wonder why anyone would need a whole appliance devoted to cooking something that usually only requires a saucepan with a lid. It seems silly, I know, but I wouldn’t go back to making rice on the stovetop for anything. A hundred million Japanese people must be on to something.
For starters, it’ll make pretty much anything that has to do with rice–pilaf, pudding, brown rice, sticky rice, even congee, which is basically rice mush (and one of my all-time favorite foods). And it will make all those excellent dishes ON A TIMER. Which means I can start at least a part of dinner whenever I feel like it (remember my pitch for making part of the meal far enough ahead to force you to commit?). It also has a “keep warm” function, so that I have some flexibility about when I serve, even if I didn’t have the foresight to use the timer.
The magical rice cooker does all this by means of something called “fuzzy logic,” which is about as inexplicable as it sounds. You tell it how soft you want your rice, and it knows when the rice is done. It’s magic. My personal favorite is the medium-grain rice that is used in sushi–it’s my ultimate comfort food. In the dead of winter, when I’m cold and miserable, I make myself a bowl of plain white rice, lightly salted, each pearly grain distinct but slightly sticky–and the world is a warmer, softer place.
I’m not going to promise you that the rice cooker cranks out a perfect meal every time–my disaster of a couple of days ago has already proven its fallibility. Chalk that one up to user error, though–the machine actually did what I asked it to; I just didn’t ask well. Back to the tomato-pilaf-drawing-board, I suppose.
P.S.–If you have a rice cooker, or are thinking of getting one, you need The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook by Beth Hensperger and Julie Kaufmann. It has everything you need, and no, it’s not where I got the tomato pilaf idea!