Choose A Rice Cooker For Perfect Rice
One of the most useful small appliances that you will ever buy is a rice cooker. A rice cooker can do much more than cook rice and is useful in both the kitchen and the dorm room.
Of course you can use a rice cooker to make excellent rice every time, but they also can be used to cook other hot cereals, soups, stews, steamed vegetables and even deserts. Be sure that you choose a rice cooker that has the features that you will use.
The top rice cookers come from the country where they originated, Japan. You will find several less expensive rice cookers from other places, but the Japanese make the best rice cookers by far.
Rice cookers come in many sizes from the small three to five cup cookers to the giant fourteen plus cup cookers. Choose a rice cooker that corresponds to the amount of rice you normally cook. They work best when used to cook rice at capacity.
Additionally, you need to know that a Japanese cup is six ounces as compared to the American cup size of eight ounces. Be sure that you adjust recipes by remembering that the cups from the rice cooker are only three quarters of an American cup.
The Japanese home prefers a five cup rice cooker.
A non-stick cooking pan in the rice cooker makes cleanup very easy. Rice cooker manufacturers use a high quality non-stick surface that works perfectly with rice. Be sure that you only use the plastic rice paddle to remove food from the pot.
There are several types of rice cookers available. Choose the one that meets your needs and budget.
On/off models cook the rice and then turn off automatically. There may not be an indicator light but these inexpensive models are very versatile and do a great job at cooking rice.
The next step up in rice cookers will keep the rice warm when cooking is finished. They do not have a true off position, so be sure that you unplug the cooker when finished. You will need to buy at this level or above to get a rice cooker with a non-stick pan.
The most expensive rice cookers offer fuzzy logic. They have different settings for soup, brown rice, texture of rice and some even offer the setting for sushi rice.
The most expensive (over two hundred dollars) rice cookers offer induction heating. These rice cookers make perfect rice every time. They can compensate for variations in measurements in rice or water.
If you like steamed vegetables, be sure that you buy a rice cooker that has the plastic steamer basket. You can even steam the vegetables as you cook your rice.
Do not forget that a rice cooker is perfect for a college student who is living in the dorm. They can cook their own meals in a small rice cooker and avoid the expense of the college cafeteria as well as all the unhealthy fast food. Be sure that they are stocked up on rice, canned soups and top raman for quick meals.
Related posts:
Related tweets from Twitter
:
No Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL