My rice cooker doesn't work any more.

*applauds*

For those with lack of cooking intuition or imagination, how exactly does setup this work?

Lay the dish towel out flat, put the lid on it, wrap the edges of the towel up and use the rubber band to bundle it up tight around the handle. Then I do the rice by sauteeing well-rinsed long-grain in a bit of butter until I get that nutty smell, add the liquid, and pop the wrapped lid on real tight. Heat down to low-low, don't mess with it for 20 minutes, should be perfect.

The rice out of my steamer is always perfect too, but it takes closer to an hour.

I've always cooked rice by this foolproof method : One cup of (washed) rice to one and a quarter cups of water. Bring to the boil in a heavy saucepan, slap on a tight-fitting lid, turn off the heat altogether and leave for 20 minutes. Perfect every time.

I love our rice cooker but it's much too big. I figured, when I bought it, bigger is better, but what's the use if you never really have more than five cups?

A Japanese friend of course used to steam her rice in a regular pot. Seemed very difficult. Just buy a damn rice cooker, they're so cheap!

We once forgot to tell my parents the rice cooker was on. They didn't unplug it for a week!

You just need to put in roughly twice the amont of water as rice, put on a lid, and DO NOT REMOVE THE LIPUNTIL THE RICE IS DONE as you will loose the steam.

also it shouldn't take an HOUR! the one i got for £20 from oriental city cooks rice perfect in like 10 minutes.

(not as good as the old one we had though, which had FUZZY LOGIC in it - I had no idea how that helped but it sounded GREBT.)

that's basically what i did during the brief, glorious period when i had access to a massive zojirushi rice cooker with a timer and warming function. rice and egg or tofu for breakfast, a bowl of rice with some kind of pickle for a snack, and lots of rice with whatever else was in the fridge for dinner. i really miss it, but that kind of cooker is fairly expensive though they seem to last for decades.

My parents brought this from Japan but didn't realize it's useless here (cause of different *wattage* or whatever you call it). :-((((((((((((((((((((((((( I think I'll buy a new one here. It seemed so handy with all the different functions.

(Though there's probably not room for another appliance in our kitchen.)

I need to buy a rice cooker before I go back to uni - can you still get them in Oriental City, Ken? (also will you teach me to make congee please?)

to make congee basically just cook the rice with way way too much water, like say four times the amount of water you would normally cook your rice with. and i like adding chicken and stuff to it (chicken wings are normally good), a bit of ginger and a bit of broth as necessary(but the idea of the congee is that it's pretty plain so you don't want it to be oily and stuff).

Then when it's all cooked to bits (the rice would have broken down and made the thing fairly thick) it's ready to eat! with some chopped spring onion bits on top (and soy sauce and white pepper as condiments). yumness. it's the best thing ever to eat if you have the flu.

oh god the cravings.. and the fried penis things that you can dip into the congee.
http://www.arthurhungry.com/pictures/oct03/congee.jpg

Yes, I think I already added that caveat.

The fact remains that if you have rice only a few times a week or less, a saucepan is more than adequate for excellent results.

but yes the fact does remain that it's pretty useless unless you use it. (and you can make do with using a decent saucepan in a low heat - a crap saucepan and half the rice is burnt and stuck to the bottom :-( )

just ordered a new zojirushi to replace my tatung. the zojirushi has a timer and multiple settings, one being PORRIDGE. i can set my oatmeal up the night before and awaken to COOKED OATMEAL.

http://www.amazon.com/Zojirushi-NS-LAC05-Cooker-Warmer-Stainless/dp/B000G30ESY/ref=pd_bbs_sr_3?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1233593566&sr=8-3

I have the same cooker (well earlier model, but similar). I have not tried the oatmeal thing, though I have done oatmeal in the slow cooker. It came out kind of meh (this was the steel-cut kind, which I like when cooked on the stove but got to mushy cooking overnight).

Please let me know about awesome dishes you make in your cooker. I like using it for coconut sticky rice!

I got one of those for Christmas! It makes the best steel cut oatmeal. Also, finally getting consistent brown rice is a big plus. Great piece of machinery.

maybe i should get one of these. cleaning is easy?

cleaning is super easy

it has brown rice setting, and oatmeal setting, and seriously what else do you need in life

pasta

btw quincie, the oatmeal doesn't cook overnight, i will set it to cook 30 minutes before i wake up

these things use a lot of energy, right?

I think mine is like 600 watts or something.

these things use a lot of energy, right?

Funny you should ask... a rice cooker uses less energy than a microwave or a pressure cooker. I don't know about a stove, but in our case, it has to use less. Our stove is an inefficient gas thing that the fool who set up our apartment stuck between the two biggest producers of coldness in our house (the back door and the fridge) which is one of those things that I can't think about too much because it makes me so mad.

BTW I am married to the OP. We bought this one, which is fine but maybe not great. It does spit out a lot of cooking water but I just coil a dish towel around the edge of the lid and that seems to take care of it.

This, too: http://ecorenovator.org/zojirushi-cooks-perfect-rice-saves-energy/

oh, i forgot to mention rice cookers make PERFECT quinoa.

god damn you guys i want one of these zujirushi gadgets. the idea of rice waiting for me when i get home is hottttt.

I got my wife a Zojirushi for xmas and she likes it pretty well. The only annoying thing is that it appears you have to unplug it to turn it off.

isn't getting your wife one kind of getting yourself one as well?

The little tag on the present would only fit one name. Also, she asked for a rice cooker.

I got my wife a Zojirushi for xmas and she likes it pretty well. The only annoying thing is that it appears you have to unplug it to turn it off.

On mine you hit "reset" and it shuts off.

is 3 cups enough? or should i switch to the fuzzy logic 5.5 cup?

Roger Ebert: The pot and how to use it

thx for tip EZ.

apparently roger ebert is out of his mind

dude 3 cups of rice is like 6-7 servings. i know you are burning calories but c'mon now.

i'm not sure if cup refers to our standardized cup or what zojirushi has designated as a cup

also i plan on making huge grain bowls for pre-ride and after-ride recovery

can i make steel cut in my zojirushi that has only one setting?

Hey that bento flask thing on the "also bought" links with the zojirushi is also way awesome, I want one.

My wife has it and it is AWESOME.

I just realized I am a total Zojirushi shill - my kickass coffee maker is a Zojirushi, and my kickass bread machine.

My kitchen would officially suck without all those things.

I wonder if anywhere in Oz sells this things.

I've recently started using a rice cooker, which my roommates all swear by, but I'm not sure how I feel about it. It is easier to not have to worry about checking or turning off the rice, but when I do anything slightly unusual with it (like make pilaf) I don't trust it. I don't mind having one, but if I had my own kitchen I would just make all my rice on the stove.

I dunno, I've seen a lot of those rice cookers that are coated in various really shitty non-stick coatings, the super shitty ones that start to wear away almost instantly. Even vague memories of someone telling me about flakes of black coming off into the rice in one.

I would buy one of the more expensive ones except I don't seem to have any problem cooking perfect rice over and over again in a pot I got for $8.99 (that is missing its lid, I use a dinner plate). I guess I just don't eat enough rice (two days a week) to get the benefit.

My parents bought a proper one last year to replace the shitty one we had. It's fucking awesome. You can do one cups (which our shitty one didn't have!) and so much else. That said, we don't eat as much rice as we used to. Stupid cause I feel my gut expanding. hah

It is still incredibly easy to cook rice in a pot.

^_^

it is easy enough but you don't have to worry about it boiling over or burning and sticking. you just set it and you forget it. comes out perfect every time.

Some folks say that if you lift the lid on stovetop rice while you are cooking it, you destroy the texture. God forbid you STIR it! I've never been able to cook rice on the stove without peeking in and sometimes scraping the sticky part off the bottom. Rice lovers everywhere recoil in horreur now.

you shouldn't break the seal, it does ruin the rice

Point being that this is a reason why people get rice cookers.