The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook
Posted on | November 7, 2008 | 1 Comment
The same day I ordered my Zojirushi rice cooker, I also ordered a book: The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook by Beth Hensperger and Julie Kaufmann. I chose this book because I wanted to do more than just cook rice in my rice cooker, a lot more. This book covers many uses for rice cookers and includes useful reference charts detailing how to cook a variety of beans and grains as well as rice. I have tried many of the recipes and haven’t had a failure yet.
This comprehensive book has 368 pages. It starts out with information about different types of rice cookers and helpful tips for purchasing one. Then it moves on to some of the basics you’ll find on most rice cookers, explaining the different cooking modes and basic things like how to measure and cook your first batch of rice. From there it moves on to a chapter of rice recipes and then to sections on how to cook all sorts of other things.
I use a 5.5 cup fuzzy logic rice cooker. One concern I had before buying the book was whether the instructions were tailored for the type of appliance I would be using. Fortunately, the authors have done a good amount of testing and provide useful notes to help you know if your rice cooker will work well with each recipe. They specify if the recipe is suited for a medium (6-cup) sized rice cooker or a larger (10-cup) one as well as telling you if you need a fuzzy logic machine or if a simple on/off type of cooker will suffice. In fact, there are quite a few recipes, especially the steamed vegetables based ones, that will only work with the on/off type of cooker.
Our rice cooker is almost always running. Sometimes it’s making the next batch of plain rice. Other times we’re trying out a pilaf recipe or cooking some other grain. In the morning it is often filled with the “Creamy Breakfast Oatmeal” made from steel-cut oats or sometimes the breakfast barley. I’ve gotten better results with the breakfast grains than I could get in a crockpot and with much less hassle, cleanup and babysitting than there would have been on the stovetop. At lunch time, you might find “Hearty Split Pea Soup” (without the turkey sausage since I don’t eat meat) or “Vegetarian Black Bean Chili” in there.
Basically, what I am saying is that if you need a book that’s better than the owner’s manual that came with your rice cooker, this is it. It will help you make full use of all the things your rice cooker can do and save you the time and frustration of experimenting to get just the right amounts of everything.
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November 16th, 2008 @ 3:02 am
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