Recipes

Rice Cooker Hacks – The Ebert Way – Priceonomics

Roger ebert rice cooker recipes

you want the best rice cooker. It comes with two speeds: cook dinner and heat. it’s not costly. Now you are able to cook dinner meals for the remainder of your life on two sq. toes of counter area, plus a slicing board.

Roger Ebert

Basic tenets of the economics of pricing embody 1) serving to folks do extra with much less, and a pair of) roger ebert is one epic badass to be admired. So it is not shocking that we’re a bit obsessive about rice cookers. If you happen to suppose rice cookers are only for making rice, we’ve got some very shocking information for you: Rice cookers aren’t only for making rice.

Rice cookers can be utilized to organize scrumptious, full and wholesome meals. Certain, you may make rice, however you can even make rooster, eggs, greens, pastries, and absolutely anything else. sure, in a rice cooker.

what’s so good about that? With a rice cooker, you may make an important meal with out a range. all you want is the kitchen, a slicing board and a knife. For somebody with few assets or who desires to stay a extra minimalist existence, the rice cooker is an intriguing proposition. Can a budget rice cooker obviate the necessity for a cooker that prices tens of hundreds of {dollars}?

Rice cooker as a minimalist system?

To make sure, well being issues now stop me from consuming. that hasn’t discouraged my cooking. now cooking is a purer train, free of organic compulsion.

Roger Ebert

for many of his life, this writer thought {that a} rice cooker was maybe essentially the most boring kitchen equipment. It is a system that makes rice in any case, that is not fascinating! not solely that, however at first look it seems to be a single-function system. Filling your kitchen with numerous single-function cooking devices is a violation of minimalist existence that the crew at Priceonomics finds interesting. as a substitute of shopping for a rice cooker, why not cook dinner your rice in a pot that can be utilized for a lot of various things?

however after stumbling throughout a roger ebert weblog submit extolling the various virtues of a rice cooker, this writer’s perception {that a} rice cooker is boring and extreme was questioned. A rice cooker is not only a single-function system, however you’ll be able to truly use it instead of a pot, range, oven, steamer, and a lot of the costly instruments usually wanted to supply glorious meals. scorching meals.

Amazingly good author and movie critic Roger Ebert has been cooking with the identical rice cooker for 21 years. For him, one-pot cooking utilizing a rice cooker was one thing of a revelation, not not like once you first use an iPhone – it simply works! Throw all of the substances in a pot, add some spices and water and cook dinner an incredible meal. use it to make breakfasts, soups, rice, chili, stews, desserts, and even bread. The Rice Cooker: It Has Nice Purposes!

how a rice cooker works

how does the cooker understand how lengthy to cook dinner the rice? It’s a thriller from the East. Do not ask questions you do not want solutions to.

Roger Ebert

A rice cooker makes it tougher to get rice fallacious. When making rice in a saucepan, you want the correct amount of rice, water, warmth, and time. with a rice cooker, you solely want the correct amount of rice and water. fewer issues to spoil!

Primarily, the rice cooker consists of a detachable steel bowl, an electrical heater, and a thermostat. add rice and water to the container, placed on the lid and activate the system to “cook dinner”. the rice cooker brings the water to its boiling level (100 levels Celsius).

Solely after all of the water has been absorbed into the rice or has evaporated does the temperature within the pot rise above 100 levels Celsius and the thermostat signifies that the rice is cooked. The rice cooker then switches from “cook dinner” mode to “heat” mode and you may are inclined to it everytime you need. This is among the largest benefits of constructing rice in a pot as a substitute of a saucepan: you do not have to watch its progress to show it off when it is accomplished.

so, can you actually make a great meal utilizing a rice cooker?

I am pondering of you, scholar in your dorm. you lonely author, artist, musician, potter, plumber, builder, hermit. you mother and father with kids. you, night time watchman. you obsessed pc programmer or weary internet employee.

Roger Ebert

seems they’re!

none of us “obsessed pc programmers” and “drained internet staff” at priceonomics had ever used a rice cooker earlier than, not to mention used it to cook dinner a complete meal. nonetheless, we had been intrigued by the concept of ​​throwing a bunch of uncooked meals right into a pot, urgent a button, and magically turning it into scrumptious meals.

we took a stroll to the native mattress bathtub & additional and purchased the most cost effective rice cooker that they had: the $20 imusa 5-cup cooker. the net critiques for this factor had been fairly horrible, however we had been in a position to decide it up regionally and it was low cost.

a box of food

we scoured the online for some rice cooker recipes. To be trustworthy, the neighborhood of rice cooker fanatics is a little bit of a disorganized bunch and their recipes are written haphazardly (typical recipe: take a bunch of stuff, throw it within the pot, belief us). Even Roger Ebert’s ebook on one-pot meals was principally simply his weblog submit plus some reader feedback was a ebook (we, like this Amazon reviewer, do not advocate you purchase our idol’s ebook).

we finally determined to adapt this aromatic rooster and rice recipe which was tailored from ebert’s ebook (which was “tailored” from a touch upon his weblog). we selected it as a result of it appeared like a hearty, nutritious scorching meal, and all of the gear you wanted was a rice cooker, knife, and slicing board. Since at priceonomics we do not have a knife or chopping board, the rooster and greens had been minimize up at this writer’s home after which taken to work.

To feed our crew, we add 3 “cups” of rice to the pot (the “cup” that comes with the pot is about 75% the dimensions of a daily cup), 5 “cups” of water, 2 inventory cubes, a splash of sesame oil and olive oil, and salt, pepper, and a bit of Indian achar (scorching seasoning) for seasoning. then, we add one (of every, chopped) carrot, inexperienced onion and tomato. lastly, a pound of chopped rooster breast.

a bowl of soup

uncooked rooster, greens, and rice within the cooker earlier than turning it on. I hope this works!

then, we flipped the swap to cook dinner and received again to work. 45 minutes later it was accomplished! we gave the plate a bit of stir, made positive the rooster was cooked and added a bit of extra salt and achar for taste and served it to the crew.

a person cooking food in a pan

uncooked supplies transformed into meals. magic!

that is what we discovered:

1. it was actually good! the crew general had very constructive issues to say concerning the meals. it was full and tasted good. particularly, the rice was very pleasantly infused with taste. this experiment was a lot better than our final crew experiment of constructing home made weight-reduction plan coke.

2. it was actually low cost. the price of substances for the whole meal that fed 4 folks was about $12. the substances had been purchased from a reasonably costly grocery retailer and most of that value was the rooster breast. one may simply get that value 50% decrease. even the price of the substances ($12) plus the rice cooker ($20) was lower than the common day by day value of lunch for our crew.

3. it was simple sufficient it nonetheless took a while to cut all of the substances and ensure the suitable spices had been available however the cooking actually went “set it and overlook it”. Additionally, if the meals you made was a bit bland, simply add extra of your favourite sauce on the finish and it out of the blue tastes good. It is an anti-fragile strategy to cook dinner! and cleanup was a breeze. merely wash the nonstick steel bowl (and knife and slicing board).

so what else are you able to do utilizing a rice cooker?

The rice cooker was wonderful for making a single meal of grains, protein, and greens. as scrumptious because it was, we received fairly bored (and perhaps fattened) consuming variants of this meals on a regular basis. If you happen to decide to cooking in a rice cooker, are you caught consuming a number of heavy, one-pot rice-based mostly meals? truly, the great of us on the web have already found out tips on how to make virtually something utilizing the rice cooker:

rice cooker fritata for breakfast

a pizza with cheese and toppings

picture credit score: bento solely.

rice cooker spaghetti and meatballs for lunch

a bowl of food

picture credit score: meals.com.

rice cooker bread (we expect?) for a snack

a collage of food

picture credit score: bento solely.

luxurious salmon & eggs for dinner

a bowl of food

Picture credit score: The New York Instances.

and rice cooker banana bread for dessert

a plate of food

picture credit score: a contemporary lady.

conclusion

You may put together scrumptious full meals with only one rice cooker. even the priceonomics crew may do it and we’re dangerous cooks and don’t have any kitchen utensils within the workplace. If you happen to ever end up in a state of affairs the place you do not have entry to a kitchen, want to supply lunch to your total startup for lower than $12 a day, or wish to work much less within the kitchen, a rice cooker is totally superior. for you.

The draw back is that cooking in a rice cooker is lo-fi cooking. by throwing every thing in a single pot, you lose the power to cook dinner the person parts in essentially the most acceptable manner. for instance, in our meal, the rooster would have tasted a lot better if it had been cooked individually in a skillet. however that will have required extra work, so it is a commerce off. and we do not have a frying pan or range in our workplace.

At priceonomics, we’re all the time searching for the optimum meals: what meals offers you the utmost mixture of taste and diet for the least period of time and price? if soylent inexperienced existed, we might most likely eat it. till then, making ready nutritious and cheap meals in a quite simple manner is a gorgeous possibility. the rice cooker is now a everlasting addition to the worth-financial system workplace.

This submit was written by rohin dhar. observe him on twitter right here or on google plus. he’s grateful that he didn’t give the crew meals poisoning. get the most recent from priceonomics on fb or twitter.

See more  42 Amazing Instant Pot and Slow Cooker Meat Recipes

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