Things you've cooked using a rice cooker other than rice...

[Titan]

I mistakenly cooked a bunch of flax seeds that were in the same kindof bag and looked like brown rice.

yeah I didn't eat those.

 

[techs]

Originally posted by: Pliablemoose
Airbags.

It's the only safe way to cook rice.

Although it makes the rice cooker heavier, but a good indirect rice cooker with airbags, like a Zojirushi, kick ass man.

What is an "airbag" rice cooker? I looked up the Zojirushi website and didn't see anything like that.
Is it some way of preparing the rice?

 

[hanoverphist]

i dont own a rice cooker. or a deep fryer. or a bread machine. or a waffle maker. or a sandwich cutter. or a tabletop grill. or a foreman grill. or an evander holyfield grillinator.


i use my microwave and stove/ oven for pretty much everything i cant bbq.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Originally posted by: lxskllr

Originally posted by: Ryan

Originally posted by: lxskllr
What's the benefit of a rice cooker? I've never used one.

Perfect rice...every time. I having to stir, wait, or worry if you've burned rice to the bottom of your pot. Pour your rice and water into the cooker, and it will do it's magic until the rice is cooked, then automatically keep it warm for you when it's done.

That sounds interesting. I usually don't like single purpose appliances, but that sounds useful to me. My very quick Google search showed a wide range of prices. Is a $20 unit acceptable, or do you need to pay more to get something worth having?

$20 will get you a fine rice cooker. My roommate had a $20 rice cooker. It burned rice at the bottom though sometimes. The top was perfect. It struggled with sushi rice certainly, but not with jasmine. I myself own a $120 Zojirushi cooker and my mom does too. I upgraded to that my senior year and damn right it was PERFECT RICE ALL THE TIME. It certainly blows a $20 rice cooker out of the water. My 2nd yr roommate had a $60 zojirushi cooker though. Between that and my $120 one I notice no difference in typical use. I believe my rice cooker is just easier to cook congee and all the other variants of rice and is slightly more tolerant if you're not exact with the water addition.

Unfortunately today's electronic rice cookers don't have double water bowls so you can't really steam as easily. The old fashioned one where there's an outer bowl where you put water in was awesome. You could cook veggies very easily. With that said I've only steamed buns before. Usually I'm lazy enough I just microwave or cook on stove using a pot full of water to steam. It's ghetto but it works.

Oh, one more thing is that typical cheap rice cookers can cook rice in 20 min. The complicated Zojirushi cookers take close to an hour, so that might bug you at first that rice is taking so long, but to me it's well worth it considering there's a timer function and that the rice is perfect.

 

[fleabag]

The only reason why the rice in my experience get burnt on the bottom is because people leave the rice inside of the cooker for wayyyy too long, leaving it on the "keep warm" function. Soon as my rice is cooked, I unplug the thing as it's no surprise to me for something to get burnt when there is no more water in there..

 

[Kanalua]

I use it to steam pretty much anything.

Great for steaming chicken from frozen. Vegetable's too.

If you eat tons of rice (Hawaiian in Hawaii, we eat our share of rice) and you eat calrose or sushi rice, it's worth it to spend more on a quality rice cooker (doesn't have to be a zojirushi, though)...

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Originally posted by: fleabag
The only reason why the rice in my experience get burnt on the bottom is because people leave the rice inside of the cooker for wayyyy too long, leaving it on the "keep warm" function. Soon as my rice is cooked, I unplug the thing as it's no surprise to me for something to get burnt when there is no more water in there..

Well keep warm should keep your food warm. During college I would cook dinner late. Sometimes 8pm or even 9pm. Well there have been times where I fell asleep and I know my rice cooker says it can do keep warm for 13 hours before switching to "extended keep warm." I've woken up and to my surprise the rice is still fluffy and edible.

With my roommate's rice cooker if I leave it for like 2 hours after dinner before cleaning up then I'll have some burnt rice at the bottom. So I learned to just take it out right when it's done cooking... but knowing that the Zojirushi can do it should mean that it's technically possible.

Originally posted by: Kanalua
I use it to steam pretty much anything.

Great for steaming chicken from frozen. Vegetable's too.

If you eat tons of rice (Hawaiian in Hawaii, we eat our share of rice) and you eat calrose or sushi rice, it's worth it to spend more on a quality rice cooker (doesn't have to be a zojirushi, though)...

Yup. My ex's Tiger rice cooker certainly was good enough. I didnt heads up compare it to my Zojirushi but I don't remember it being any worse.

 

[AreaCode707]

Originally posted by: Titan
I mistakenly cooked a bunch of flax seeds that were in the same kindof bag and looked like brown rice.

yeah I didn't eat those.

LOL! My husband did that once, on purpose, and put curry all over them. I ate about three bites and then gave up. He manfully got halfway through a bowl before declaring flax to be the devil's spawn (literally) and dumped it all out. One short wiki article later - you're supposed to grind them and make them into flour.

 

[nascha]

So much better to use multicooker for cooking! You can cook rise there and a lot of different dishes. The same price as a rise cooker, but a lot of possibilities. For example I bought Redmond just for 89€, and it's really good! Does somebody have it?

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