Get a rice cooker
- Scott Daniels: We Ate Well and Cheaply
- August 6, 2021
- 909
Japanese chef Masaharu Morimoto is probably the greatest chef in the world, pulling off feats in his dishes that seem impossible while making everything look effortless. Morimoto can literally do anything and everything in the kitchen and cook at the highest levels in just about every cuisine in the world. His advice to cooks at home?
“Get a rice cooker.”
Cooking a perfect batch of plain white rice presents a challenge to many cooks, especially for those of us who grew up on Minute Rice. There are a lot of video tutorials out there, with no shortage of advice on getting it right.
I always saw having a machine designated to cooking just one thing to be a waste of money, and many rice cookers are about the size of a basketball, taking up a lot of precious counter or stashing space. I’ve learned to make a pretty decent batch of plain rice, but it’s a side dish you have to be careful about and give your attention.
If I had a nickel for every time the stupid rice pot has boiled over, spreading sticky, hot starch water all over the stovetop, I’d be a fairly wealthy guy. No matter how low I set the burner, it cooks over. So we make a lot of Quinoa instead of rice because it is better behaved. I intensely dislike scraping smelly, burned starch off the stove.
Over the weekend we spotted a small rice cooker/steamer at the clearance price of $12. At that tiny investment, I was willing to surrender my principles, and we bought it. We tried it out on Sunday.
Morimoto is right. Get a rice cooker.
All you have to do is add water and rice, close the lid, and hit the button. When the rice is finished, it switches to keeping the food warm until you’re ready, so no more swearing at a boiled-over mess. Set it up and come back with a fork when you’re ready to eat. I am sold.
There are still a few things you must do to get perfect results, and the most important step in making white rice is to rinse it well before cooking. Measure your uncooked rice into a bowl and cover it with cold water. Swish the rice around in the water with your fingers until the starch from the rice clouds the water and drain it in a mesh strainer. Return the rice to the bowl, add water again and repeat the process for at least three, better four times, until you have clear water. This prevents the rice from becoming too sticky and clumpy, offering a fluffy finished product.
Once the rice is cooked, it’s ready to eat as is or to become fried rice or a cilantro and lime version. With the cooker we bought, you also can use an included basket to steam vegetables at the same time.
You’re not limited to ordinary long-grained white rice and can produce buckets of short-grained sushi rice, brown rice or any type of rice you like. With this gadget I may be persuaded to splurge for the supposedly outstanding but pricey Carolina Gold Rice.
Our cooker is a brand called Aroma and normally costs about $38 at retail. You can find many brands with varying features in stores and online with a little research.
I don’t have an air fryer, a toaster oven or a slow cooker because I’ve never found justification for any of them. Now I have to transfer rice cookers out of their category and into the “must have” group.
Get one. You’ll thank me, and you’ll be very happy to not have to scrape burned starch from your stove top. If you have one of the awful glass-surface stoves, as I do, you should stop reading this and go buy a rice cooker right away. You’ll never have to chip away at your cooktop with a razor blade again.