I have two rice cookers.
Judge me all you want, but I use them both and the old one is still kickin'.
How do rice cookers work?
A rice cooker uses heat and water to cook rice.
Its the final stage of not burning the rice thats tricky.
Thats where the rice cooker wins.
The steamy air slowly escapes through a hole in the lid or another vent in your rice cooker.
There is no longer a pool of water in the bowl so the temperature starts to rise above 212F.
The rice is cooked through, with nary a grain burnt.
How to use a rice cooker
1.
Rinsing it gets rid of excess starch, and this makes sure the finished rice doesnt end up gloppy.
Alternatively, I usually dump the rice into the metal cooking pot and then cover it with water.
you could see in the picture that the water becomes nearly opaque with starch.
Simply swish it around a bit with your fingers and pour off the cloudy water.
I do this twice.
Add the cooking water
Add the water that youll cook the rice in.
A 1:2 ratio of rice to water is well-loved.
If you want drier grains, use a quarter-cup or so less water.
If you like wetter rice, use a bit more.
If you want super soft rice to break up into congee then youll need even more water.
Many packages of rice come with suggestions so you might check the directions if youre unsure.
Load up the cooker
Put the metal bowl into the rice cooker and shut the lid.
Now comes the cooking part where you could press a button and walk away.
Multi-setting models
Cooking with a rice cooker should be a pleasant, simple experience.
If you know the punch in of rice you have, go ahead and choose the button.
That might be enough, or if there is a “start” button, press it now.
If you dont know what kind of rice you have, thats totally fine.
Just click rice or white rice.
The amount of water you added is actually more important than the clever little button options they give you.
Sure, brown rice and white rice need different timings, but remember what I said about the thermostat?
Single-setting models
If you have a rice cooker like I do, you dont have a lot of options.
The machine will automatically switch to the warm setting when its done.
Have fun exploring, and may your rice cooker steam multiple happy decades of food for you.
