Cho vs. the Rice Cooker

[chomiji]

I don't believe in rice cookers. I know how to make rice, dammit. But I scorch it maybe 4 to 6 times per year, so the Mr. bought me a rice cooker to prevent this calamity. To put this statistic in perspective, you should note that I make rice an average of twice a week ... . He was tactful enough, at least, not to buy it as a Mother's Day or birthday gift - but enough of a guy to proudly point out that he hadn't bought it for that sort of occasion.

But I digress.

Anyway, tonight, because our stove is dead (it's a sordid tale involving mice, and a socket wrench, and old wiring ... don't ask), I was forced to use the rice cooker.

I managed to scorch the rice.

I think the problem was that I left it on "warm" too long - the manual didn't give any estimates for how long it would take the rice to cook, so I ended up having to let it sit while the meat finished cooking. But let me tell you, I felt a really bizarre sort of triumph in pointing out to the Mr. that rice cookers do not prevent scorched rice ... .

Comments

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Personally, I consider the ability to burn anything, no matter the circumstances, to be a valuable gift. Then again, I come from a gene pool where A Person Who Is Not Me once managed to light a box of Hi-C on fire...

[chomiji]

A box of Hi-C? Now, that sounds like a really juicy story ... and no, I didn't mean that to be quite the grisly pun it turned out to be!

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

It involved a Texas summer, a microwave, a 13 year old boy with hormones, a cute neighbor(err...bearing in mind that our "block" is a circular mile) girl who was thirsty after riding her bike, and the only non-frozen drink options being water, milks and tea, with all the juice packs frozen.

The 16 year old hadn't been made aware there was even a cute neighbor girl in the house until she heard "MYLES! I THINK IT'S ON FIRE!"

[chomiji]

Heh, methinks li'l bro was unaware that those juice packs usually have a layer of foil, and metal and microwaves don't mix! That is an awesome story ... did he scare the pretty young thing off permanently?

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Nah, she wasn't scared off.

The funny thing is that he now INSISTS he was only 8-9 when it happened, now, forgetting that we weren't allowed to stay home alone until he was 13(well...I was once I turned 13, but not both of us at once.)

[chomiji]

He sounds like a handful! I was left alone with my sister (2 years younger) from age 12 onward.

[chomiji]

Oh, it's definitely a U.S. brand - Oster. For an engineer, the Mr. can be shockingly blasé about trying to get the best model - I'm the one who usually does all that research with the Consumer Reports and stuff.

Well, I guess I mean the okoge stuff. I love rice, but it's not part of my cultural heritage in any way, shape, or form ... unless you want to count the proverbial fondness of U.S. Jewish folks for Chinese food (and I'm not sure that's proverbial anywhere except among ourselves). I'll eat it when it's like that, but the other two make faces at it!

I generally don't cotton to gadgets of any kind ... we have a stand mixer (bought second hand), but I've never used it, and my little electric hand mixer (which I only own because an old friend was horrified to find I didn't have one) has been used maybe 15 times in the 20+ years I've had it. I whip/beat stuff with a wire whisk - I own three of those! I don't even use the nuke that much, except for fozen peas when I'm feeling lazy and heating up leftovers for snacks. (Oh, and for making cornmeal mush, which is a special treat for me ... heh, the rice cooker might be good at that ... .)

Re timing on the stove - God only knows. He's waffling back and forth - maybe there'll be a sale this weekend because of the 4th? And I'm feeling curiously Zen about the whole subject. Part of the issue is that this stove is so old that it's wired into the electrical system, so we'll need an electrician - not just to buy a new stove. But thanks very much for the offer of the cooker - I might take you up on it this weekend.

(Hey, you wanna come watch our July 4th parade? We have a really good one. I think my sister and her family are coming, but I already warned them that I can't feed them brunch - usually Kat gives us brunch on July 4, but they're still back in Scandanavia this year.)

[chomiji]

:-D

When I was growing up in DC in the 1960s, Jewish people were the only non-Chinese people I ever saw eating in Chinese restaurants ... . And of course there's the Xmas day tradition: a movie and a Chinese dinner. (Which you participated in this past year, except that it was Vietnamese instead!)

I have decided opinions about where crunchy brown bits belong. They don't belong on top of mac and cheese, for example. But I know some will disagree with me there!

I couldn't take a long lunch (we're really swamped), but I could meet you briefly ... the parade is on the 4th itself. There are fireworks in the evening, too, but we don't always go for those - the parade is right down Carroll, the main drag 2 blocks from our house, whereas the fireworks are at the middle school 3/4 of a mile away. The Greenbelt Dog Training Marching Drill Team will be among the marchers, as usual (parade program here)!

[chomiji]

I'd say, lunch around 1:00. Where do you want to meet?

(And THANK YOU!)

[chomiji]

Some way of boiling water would be good ... now the Mr. is alking about fixing the stove - the old one - tonight ... a thought that gives me the willies, quite frankly.

Eesh, I have no idea about real restaurants there - I usually just grab and go back to my office with the spoils. Is the Sbarro's the buffet/line place between the liquor store and the train gates? That might be the best compromise (I don't think I have time for anything more "real").

I'm going to e-mail you my office phone in case our cells have trouble talking to each other in the Land of the Catenaries.

Re: Almost forgot..

[chomiji]

That's not how one cooks kasha! Kasha needs to be mixed with egg and stirred in a frying pan to bring out the flavor properly! To use a rice cooker for the next step would mean dirtying both the rice cooker and the frying pan!

Kasha and mamaliga (mush) are in my ancestral food repertoire. Of course corn (maize) is New World, but when an ethnic group has eaten something for a couple of hundred years, it's hard to tell them that it's not traditional ... .

When I do mush in the microwave, I stop it and stir it a couple of times.

Wow, those red beans and rice would be a shocker to Zach! And risotto shouldn't get quite that mushed.

ETA: How's SDK going? Have you run into Muramasa (in the icon) yet?

Re: Almost forgot..

[chomiji]

Gravitation is pretty damn silly! I enjoyed bits of it, but mostly ... meh. The Young Lady loved it, though.

(I have a post on it here, althouh I was only up to volume 5 when I wrote the main review.)

Re: Almost forgot..

[chomiji]

Hee, yes, ipperne keeps recommending those dj ... and sanada is of the opinion that Gravi only exists to provide an entry point to them. I haven't actually seen them, oddly enough ... .

I think the only way I can take the Eiri/Shuichi is to think of it like another variation on one of the reasons Hakkai needs Gojyo: t Shuichi's comic naivete and energy cheer Eiri up and keep him from dwelling on his own issues so much.

[sanada.livejournal.com]

Oooh, I love that chewy browned rice from the bottom of the cooker. That's the "okoge", and it's even tastier and crunchier when you make rice in a traditional pot. (Believe it or not, burnt rice is desirable and is often found as a garnish on an otherwise boring bowl of rice.) And it's rather amusing that since "okama" ("iron pot") is slang for a gay man, then "okage" (something that sticks to the rice pot) is slang for a women who likes gay men...

[sanada.livejournal.com]

And have her burn more deliciousness for us! I can never seem to get it to burn *enough* in my cute new rice cooker.

[chomiji]

LOL! Sanada-san, you are the most educational person I know! The things I learn from you! Do I want to know why okama is slang for a gay man?

The brown stuff on the bottom was actually quite tasty, IMO, but bear in mind that I used Basmati rice, so it probably wasn't very Japanese in flavor. Yes, the times when I've scorched it in a plain ol' Revereware steel/copper pot, it's definitely been crunchier.

(I'm making you the same offer I made smilla re coming to see the Tacky Park July 4 parade, BTW ... it will definitely be a family affair, but it's also a great funky parade, featuring everything from Cub Scouts to Caribbean carnival dancers in shiny skimpy costumes.)

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I have a cookbook called the Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook!

It is, alas, in a box somewhere in the garage at the moment...

[chomiji]

A likely excuse! Humph!

;-)

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Hey! You are PERFECTLY welcome to come over here and dig through the bookboxes! XD

(I finally managed to get an in to the image I wanted to do for you for Sweet Charity, so it should hopefully be done by the end of this weekend! XD)

[chomiji]

Believe me, I understand about the boxes! And we're clearly telepathic or psychopathic or something ... I was just knitting up my courage to ask you about that Sweet Charity item. Great news!

Speaking of auctions, the livelongnmarry one is so very active that it's utterly deluging my f-list ... I'm wondering whether I should offer something (a Tarot reading would be the most likely, I should think ... I'm not feeling very confident in either my writing or my art).

[telophase.livejournal.com]

It hasn't been far from my mind for weeks. I knew which prompt I wanted to so, but wasn't able to come up with a concept that worked for me. I think I finally have. LD

[chomiji]

Ooooh, I'm all excited!

(I have to say that most of the fan art offers on this auction are not really my thing, although I also liked the work of the woman you praised, the one who had an art-deco-ish style ... I put her auction on track so I could return to it if I lose the bidding on emungere's fic. I have to give myself a strict budget for these things ... .)

(Edited for common sense.)

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Yup! I've got a bid on mscongeniality for a fic that just got outbid, but I'm also currently outbid on a poem by seajules, and if I decide to let that one go, I can spend more on mscongeniality, but if not ... it's a balancing act, but at least I've got two weeks to figure it out! XD

[chomiji]

So what's the deadline for putting things up for auction? I know it was in there somewhere, and now I can't find it. I was thinking of offering some of my original Iron Crown Middle-Earth Roleplaying packages, which I have mint in their shrink wraps as part of my authorial payment. I see that these things are being sold online for anything from $12 to (eeek!) $87.00, so they might actually fetch something decent. (The original cover prices were, like $6.)

(Also, I thought I might offer something I used to do for my gamesmaster friends: construct a list of character or place names to order ... that would be useful for a fic writer as well.)

[chomiji]

I'm still in the running for emungere's, though! (But the bidding is already up into my max range for this sort of thing.)

[ann-leckie.livejournal.com]

I used to feel as you do, that I can make rice perfectly well in a saucepan so why the heck would I need a rice cooker?

And then I got a rice cooker. I don't have to fuss with the burner level. I don't have to set a timer. If I go down to the basement and ose track of time and stay there for forty five minutes and don't hear the timer, it's no problem. Yeah, sometimes the bottom layer gets a little brown and crispy. Eh.

I can also safely tell the paidhi kids to make rice--they'll eat brown rice all by itself, for a snack--by themselves. And brown rice? I always scorch on the stove. Comes out perfect in the rice cooker.

I love my rice cooker.

[chomiji]

But Cho Girl (a/k/a the Young Lady) is plenty big enough to make her own ramen noodles on the stove ... if we only had a functional stove! And I can't make my family eat brown rice. They are anti-health-food. It's a pain.

The trouble is, if I'm cooking rice, I'm probably cooking at least one other thing (and usually two), so I need to be in the kitchen anyway. Right now, I don't really have enough counter space to leave it out, either, and that's probably a good part of my general gadget-phobia - I don't like having to pull things (rice cooker, electric mixer) out of the pantry and set them up.

I totally agree!

[jess-dreamsfly.livejournal.com]

I loooove my rice cooker...and especially when I use it to make brown rice. I've actually never tried to cook rice in a saucepan (although my mother keeps insisting that I learn how) just b/c I have this amazing Zojirushi cooker:

(http://wize.com/rice-cookers-and-steamers/zojirushi-ns-zcc10-neuro-fuzzy-55-cup-rice-cooker/42664#t=737)

I've found Zojirushi to be an excellent brand. Have you found any other brands that are good?

[hikari-mibu.livejournal.com]

I will never be able to understand why people can burn/scorch/destroy (*cough Mum cough*) rice? It's just like my Dad not being able to cook pasta...

[chomiji]

When I've done it, it's usually because I've either (a) become mixed up with the stove knobs again (the now-defunct stove has a non-intuitive arrangement of knobs) or (b) become distracted for a few too many minutes with something else (like, maybe, this computer, which is in the room next to the kitchen ... ). But as I pointed out, we're talking less than 5% of the time ... I'm usually considered a good although rather rough-and-ready cook (think pot roast and home-made biscuits rather than French haute cuisine ... and I make great mashed potatoes, much in demand at family holiday meals).

[hikari-mibu.livejournal.com]

Sound nice, *thinks of alternate vegertarian options* well, the only reason my Mum burns things is because she lost her sense of smell when the Little Terror was born due to various Lupus factors and my Dad is more adapt to cooking for large unfussy diners, not me and the Terror...

[ipperne.livejournal.com]

...thinking about the unlimitted amout of disasters a ricecooker (or any other kind of specialized coking device, except my toastmachine) in my kitchen could lead to was really really scary.

But then again, pots and pans and (according to the guy) a Weber is all you need to cook. Rice made on a Weber (or whatever brand) is actually really nice. you should try it^^

By the way; http://www.geocities.com/wanderingleopard/foodanddrink.html#frikadeller
The you can cook them for the Mr.
Personally I would use two onions and oatflakes instead of breadcrumbs.

[chomiji]

LOL - baking stuff on a Weber could be a challenge! (Actually, I've made biscuits - the scone type, not the cookies - with a campfire in my Girl Scouts days, long ago. But it certainly isn't my preferred modus operandi for baking!)

Ooooh, thanks for the recipe! The only problem I can see is that they're going to need to be fried for a pretty long time to get done enough all the way through. What exactly do you mean by oatflakes? Prepared oat breakfast cereal flakes? Dry porridge oatmeal?

[ipperne.livejournal.com]

Actually, there's this guy who's a regular costumer at my dad's butcherstore who cooks everything on the Weber. Even cake. pretty wierd if you ask me. but each to their own^^

the time it takes frying them, depends on how large they are. if you don't want to spend too much time frying, you can cheat a little and just fry them untill they get a little color and then put them in the oven in a little water (max one cm.) for half an hour.

*grabs dictionary* um, dry porridge oatmeal. That's the only thing we have here^^ it's nice to eat with milk on as breakfast too.

[artillie.livejournal.com]

See, now I must know what happened to your stove. I can understand the socket wrench and the old wiring, but... mice?

Rice cookers are for wimps: two cups of water, one cup of rice, 16 minutes.

[chomiji]

Well ... it's not nearly as exciting as it sounds. There was a funny smell in the kitchen when we came back from vacation, seemingly emanating from the stove, and I knew we had at least one mouse, and I thought maybe it had died inside the stove while we were gone ... so we took it apart (hell, we managed to fix the clothes dryer a couple of times) ... and now it's broken (we also discovered that the mouse - or mice - had been nesting very messily in the insulation ... it was gross). (Cue that wah, wah, wa-a-a-ah! sound from awkward moments in classic Looney Tunes cartoons ... .)

Yes, I usually use those proportions - maybe a little more water if the rice seems dry (I'm using long-grain Basmati, which seems to want a little more water), but I do it by appearance: bring it to a brisk boil, then lower the heat to half and simmer until the top gets "cratered," then put a lid on and lower to heat to barely "warm" and just let it sit for 15-20 minutes.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

When I'm not using a rice cooker I use the proportions and cooking time from my copy of The Chine Moon Cookbook. I've forgotten the exact proportions, but you bring it to a good boil, turn it to low with the lid on for 15 minutes, then pull it off the heat and let sit, covered, for 20. It's almost always perfect.

[chomiji]

How long do you soak it? I usually just chuck it into the pan.