On the cooking theme, yesterday at a bar, there was a brief yet vigorous discussion about whether or not rice cookers were the most pointless of inventions.
On one side of the ring, Tony, an Australian who had survived the trials of independent overseas living with no more than a saucepan, a stove and presumably some sort of rice-measuring device.
On the other side, six bewildered Asians who took some time to grasp the meaning of Tony’s challenge. (The point of a rice cooker? Huh? Whaddya mean… It cooks rice. What? Cook rice without a rice cooker? But that’s…that’s crazy talk.)
I went skiing last year with fifteen friends. At least half of us were Asian. Six days without a rice cooker was inconceivable. Witness the following email excerpt from Damjan (a European) in response to five earlier (deadly serious) emails negotiating whose responsbility it would be to bring a rice cooker to Mount Buller.
*Rice Cooker*
It seems a very bulky thing to bring. However, we've got a big group so
it might be worth bringing one for everyone to use. Especially for
those addicted to rice. *cough* Carlo *cough*
(Did I mention the bread has been invented?? It's cheap, easily
available, and requires no preparation!)
“Rice,” Tony insisted last night, “is the easiest of foods cook. Just put a cup of it in a saucepan, add two and a half cups or whatever of water and stick it on the stove. I get perfect rice every time. Who needs a rice cooker?”
Asians need rice cookers, apparently. So maybe there are some non-Asian rice cooking masters out there like Tony but too many times, I’ve had to chew Westernised rice that is too soggy, dry or some disconcerting combination of soggy rice punctuated with hard uncooked grains.
Wikipedia says:
The preparation of rice has traditionally been a tricky cooking process that requires accurate timing, and errors can result in inedible undercooked or burnt rice. Rice cookers aim to avoid these problems by automatically controlling the heat and timing in the preparation of the rice, while at the same time freeing up a heating element on the range. Although the rice cooker does not necessarily speed the cooking process, the cook’s involvement in cooking rice with a rice cooker is significantly reduced and simplified.
Let me conclude by asking:
- Can you cook rice on a stove, finish an hour early and keep the rice perfectly warm and fluffy until dinner time?
- Can you get children to cook rice on a stove?
- Can you prepare a dinner party for twenty by cooking ten cups of raw rice on a stove?
- Can you cook perfect rice every time when you are as clumsy and clueless in the kitchen as Joan is??
If you have answered “No” to any of these questions, your life would be much enriched by the purchase of a rice cooker.
Our rice cooker at home, which I plan to ask my parents for as a dowry when I am married off to a peasant farmer.
Yeah, as long as Tony’s not the peasant farmer, ’cause then you’d have to ask your parents to leave some bench space in your dowry as well.
😛
By the way, I didn’t want to say this last night because it would weaken our argument, but yesterday I managed to completely f*** up some rice, even when I used the rice cooker!
Oops.
Well, living in Vietnam as I am, a rice cooker is seen as an absolute necessity (although I don’t do any home cooking at all, I mean why bother when you can eat on the street for a few Dong? You might be interested in checking out http://www.stickyrice.typepad.com – not my site but a couple of Aussies I know are running it)…no Vietnamese I know can do without one…
Keep up the good stuff – and I never thought I’d ever have an opinion on rice cookers til now!
JC
For the past decade our microwave has doubled as a rice cooker. After some experimentation, my dad managed to work out the right amounts of rice and water and the best microwave settings for getting the rice just right. It’s great because this way I don’t need to supervise it AND I save on bench space.
Too bad we got a new microwave recently, now he’ll have to recalibrate his recipe.
My parents used to cook rice on the stove (and did a good job). Now we have a rice cooker, and everyone is much happier 🙂
But you don’t get the slightly golden bits you get when you do it on the stove
Vera, I can explain why you can screw up cooking rice. The rice cooker is supposed to take the human element out of rice, but you measure out your rice and water by throwing in a random amout of rice and then sticking your finger in to ‘feel’ whether you’ve added enough water. Does this sound silly to anyone?
It sounds almost as silly as what I do, which is carefully measure out equal number cups of rice and water, freak out when I forget if I’m up to three cups or four, so I pour it all out and start again.
What??? Sacrilege!
You can’t *really* cook rice unless you use the ‘stick-finger-in’ method. Taking all the ‘human’ out of rice by *measuring* the water — now, where’s the fun in that?? We may as well just get a machine to do it! ;o)
I’ve been cooking consistently at home for the past week now, and I’m proud to say that the ‘stick-finger-in’ method has produced slightly-dry to almost-too-soggy rice, with nothing completely inedible!
ACTUALLY, the reason I screwed it up was because trying to cook a really small serve of rice (ie. one vera-sized serve).
The problem is that the bottom of my rice cooker isn’t quite flat — it’s slightly humps in the middle.
So, when there’s only a tiny bit of water (for the tiny bit of rice), the water all runs to the edge. But the rice is more or less spread evenly.
So the stuff on the edges was fine, but the grains in the centre didn’t get enough water, and turned out both uncooked and burnt.
So maybe rice cookers are best suited to people who cook large quantities of rice at once.
Plus, JOEL, my finger-measuring is no worse than your “uuuuum… I think you put one cup of rice to one and a half cups of water… or maybe it’s the other way around…”