ELECTRIC RICE COOKER

 

Cooking rice on top of a stove is like driving an old standard-shift automobile; it requires constant attention.

 

Electric rice cookers can do the job with no fuss.   If you eat rice, the electric rice cooker is the most obvious choice.

 

Cookers range from fifteen dollars to hundreds.  So, you need to ask yourself, how much rice do you need, and how often do you cook rice?

 

Our old rice cooker finally gave up the ghost

 

My wife and I eat rice occasionally, so spending the big bucks for a cooker didn’t make sense.

 

We recently bought an Aurora six-cup, fifteen-dollar rice cooker.   We have used it three times, and each time the rice scorched on the bottom.   

The beauty of buying it at Walmart is that we can return it with no hassle.

You buy cheap, it’s a crap shoot. 

the Ol’Buzzard

COSMOLOGY AND RICE

 

I was raised in the Mississippi Delta.   The earth was too rich and damp to grow potatoes.  My grandmother’s choice for starch in our diet was rice.   Rice and gravy, rice with butter, fried rice.   Rice was a staple in our diet.  Fried chicken with milk gravy on rice…

 

I am married to a New England girl and we live in Maine, so potatoes form the bulk of the starch in our diet.  But we do have rice.

 

I have never been able to cook rice properly.  Directions say: Bring to a boil, cover, simmer for 15 minutes.   There is the rub.  I have never had a stove with a burner that would simmer – it always boils even on the lowest setting – often boiling over.   I end up placing the pan partially on the burner, checking it often, adding hot water if it cooks too early; and end up with goopy rice. 

 

Finally, I have relented to technology.    I recently purchased an Aroma Rice Cooker.   The Aroma was the rice cooker of choice on America’s Test Kitchen.

 

The Aroma only cost $29.00 and you get what you pay for.  It is rather flimsy but the rice comes out perfect.  The instructions are no brainer.  You fill the water to the line in the pot and add the corresponding amount of rice with the measuring cup enclosed, close the cover, select the rice and press cook.  The rice takes fifteen minutes to cook and the pot switches to ‘keep warm’ when done.  The clean-up is easy.  

 

The rice has come out perfect every time.   Ok, nothing to do with cosmology, but we will eat more rice as the universe continues to expand.

 

the Ol’Buzzard