Amazing and Delicious Food to Cook in a Rice Cooker
For the past few years, Instant Pot has been the favorite beverage in the single pot cooking world. But before it became a popular commodity in all registries, there was a humble rice cooker. But don’t let the name fool you: rice cookers do more than just rice.
Sure, they offer the easiest way to make perfect rice, but they are also handy for a wide variety of foods. Here are a few examples of dishes you can cook in your rice cooker that might convince you to invest in one or use yours more often.
If you think about it, a rice cooker works in the same way as a multicooker (another versatile cooking device you can put on and forget ): it cooks food for a specified period of time using moist heat, retaining the aromas in the pan. Some rice cookers even have a “slow cook” setting, which means you can potentially replace your slow cooker with a rice cooker.
Even if you have the simplest rice cooker with two settings — cook and reheat, as Roger Ebert (yes, film critic) once recommended — you can still “trick” the rice cooker into cooking more than just rice.
Breakfast products
A rice cooker may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you want to make breakfast, but many breakfast items can actually be cooked in a rice cooker.
Boiled Eggs: There are roughly a billion methods to create the perfect boiled egg . Another rice cooker. While I prefer to use a pressure cooker , a rice cooker has the same benefits: cook many eggs at a time and produce eggs that are easy to clean. Admittedly, a rice cooker won’t save you time by just doing it on the stove top, but it’s pretty handy. Also, the eggs are not technically boiled, but steamed, but the eggs in the rice cooker are soft, medium or hard boiled.
Frittatas: Do you prefer boiled eggs to frittata ? Pre-cook the vegetables or any ingredients you want in frittat (you can reheat the vegetables in the microwave), then beat a few eggs right in the bowl of the rice cooker and add the ingredients to the egg mixture. Cook normally for rice, and when it’s done, you’ll have a quick breakfast (or dinner) for at least two people, depending on the size of your rice cooker. Here’s a recipe from Just Bento .
Oatmeal and other hot breakfast cereals: Just like oatmeal can be cooked overnight in an earthenware pot , you can cook oatmeal in a rice cooker. Let the oatmeal soak in the rice cooker overnight, then turn it on in the morning to cook a hot breakfast after about half an hour (or set a timer, if available, so the oatmeal cooks when you get out of bed). Compared to a multicooker, the non-stick rice pot is easier to clean and you can cook less oatmeal without worrying about the oatmeal crust on the bottom.
Kitchn suggests using 1 cup plain old-fashioned oats for 1 3/4 cups liquid, or 1 cup chopped oats for 2 1/2 cups liquid (such as water and milk) and then cook it at a lower temperature setting. (Sorry for those of you with a basic rice cooker, but this dish seems to require a porridge setting.) This way you can make other hot breakfast cereals like breakfast barley, breakfast cereal, and breakfast rice pudding – and / or add fresh fruit, cinnamon, and other flavors.
Giant Pancake: And then there’s the epic pancake made from a rice cooker – a giant pancake cake that’s perfect for a hearty breakfast or dessert.
Whole meals and side dishes
One of the best things about a rice cooker is that you can mix the ingredients for a meal in one pan and just walk away.
Steaming meat and vegetables: Why not steam vegetables and meat at the same time while you cook rice? As a bonus, the meat / vegetables will enhance the flavor of the rice, or you can use the broth to cook the rice and enhance the flavor of the whole dish. Your rice cooker should have instructions for using the steaming tray (if included), but you can find approximate steaming times at Aroma Housewares .
Cook the rice first and then insert the vegetable / meat pan towards the end of the cycle. If you don’t have a steaming tray or grate, you can buy them on Amazon or directly from the rice cooker manufacturer.
You can even steam a whole fish in a steamer basket lined with vegetables for a full meal in one pot. Or try steaming fully cooked sausages on sauerkraut and potatoes (30-40 minutes cooking time).
Pork Roast : Instead of a slow cooker, Apartment Therapy experimented with a rice cooker to slowly cook pork roast:
Our rice cooker has several different settings, including one that simply keeps the pot warm. This is the setting where you will leave the hob on for most of the time. First, place the ingredients in a rice cooker. I added pork stew, onions, curry, soy sauce, chili sauce, lemon juice, garlic, and a few other spices, including coriander. I usually guess the proportions.
After the normal rice cooking cycle, switch to heating mode and leave for an hour. In this way, you can cook almost any meat in a rice cooker, even whole chicken .
Mac and Cheese: Creamy mac and cheese with little or no effort. Endless adaptability and ease of cleaning. The rice cooker is ideal for making homemade mac and cheese . By the way, you can cook other pasta in the rice cooker, either simple pasta or whole pasta with meat sauce .
Beans: You still need to soak the beans (or you …) and the cooking time ranges from 30 minutes to four hours (soybeans take the longest), but with a rice cooker, you don’t need to keep an eye on the pan to cook lentils, soybeans, beans and other beans. If your rice cooker has a timer, you can soak the beans and set them to start cooking when you want the beans to be done. See this cooking time chart from The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook , a book I highly recommend every rice cooker owner.
Tofu and Vegetables: Add some tofu and vegetables to the rice cooker with some sauces for flavor and you’ll have a delicious meal or side dish out of one pot in no time.
Soups, stews and chili peppers: just toss everything in the pot and watch what happens. As film critic and obvious rice cooker Roger Ebert advises :
Let’s make a soup. Collect ingredients. Throw them in the pot. Add water to make a soup. It is known that I start with the Valley of Health can or Pritkin’s soup and add fresh ingredients. I also know that I start with Health Valley chili and add ground beef, spices and small chopped onions at the end of the day with a lid on. It watched the pot boil. Press to reheat when the soup looks right. If it looks undercooked, add some more water and continue. You will also learn how to add ingredients to the mixture in the reverse order of how long you think it will take to cook. For example, dried beans first. Even let them sit in the water and warm up a little. If you’re in a hurry, drop them and boil them. Fuck them. Never put in meat and chicken, as they will soon be digested. There are no rules. You are Aunt Mary. The last ingredients in the pot should be things you like but also crunchy, like frozen peas and corn.
Stew. Loved soup with only less water, Albert Einstein.
Anything that looks like soup, stew, or chili is treated the same way. Just be careful, things don’t overflow. Otherwise, have fun.
Appetizers and desserts
If you don’t want to turn on the oven and wait for it to heat up (or perhaps you live without a conventional oven), the rice cooker is your friend in making desserts.
Hummus: Homemade hummus is a treat and you can make it as garlic or soft as you like. The rice cooker will cook the chickpeas (this will take about an hour and a half ) and then you can simply puree the chickpeas with the other hummus ingredients.
Boiled / Boiled Fruit: Cook the fruit in hot liquid to soak up the flavor and you will have boiled fruit. For example, spiced pomegranate pears , rhubarb and strawberry poached , homemade applesauce and more can be easily prepared in a rice cooker.
Tapioca Pudding: Many rice cookers (a kind of fuzzy logic with many different settings) have a pudding setting. So why not use it to make tapioca pudding . In a rice cooker, you can use whole pearl tapioca (it usually takes a long time to cook on the stove) and add fruits and other ingredients like coconut milk instead of regular milk. It’s as easy as it gets in a rice cooker: add tapioca pearls, mix with milk and other ingredients, and start the porridge cycle.
Cheesecake: A rice cooker can mimic an oven when it comes to baking. If you want a cheesecake, combine the ingredients (cream cheese, eggs, sugar, lemon juice, heavy cream, and flour) in a rice cooker bowl, run your normal rice cooking cycle, and when it’s done, you may have the easiest way to make a cheesecake. …
Chocolate Cake: Likewise, this rice cooker cake recipe , which does not require eggs or milk (which is why it is suitable for vegans and those with allergies), requires just mixing the ingredients and waiting for about an hour.
Hot Chocolate: Would you like something to wash down the cake? Rice cookers are also great for making large batches of hot chocolate .
Banana Bread: “Bake” banana bread in a rice cooker for about an hour and a half. Combine the ingredients, grease the pan with oil, add the batter and cook as usual for the rice.
Bonus: other grains
Rice is a grain, so it probably comes as no surprise that other types of grains can be cooked in a rice cooker – quinoa, rice pilaf, risotto, polenta, cereal, and even a pseudo paella dish (just mix the sausage, chicken, and other ingredients with the rice). You can even make a breakfast burrito for breakfast in a rice cooker: boil rice, tomatoes and peppers together and crack a few eggs when the rice is done, leaving the eggs warm on mode for ten minutes before scooping. into flat cakes. But I bet most of us rice cooker owners don’t use a machine to cook more than just rice.
It will take a little experimenting with the timing and settings to cook a meal from one dish or another dish from this rice cooker, but you can most likely probably cook whatever your heart desires in it. Maybe the rice cooker deserves a permanent place on your desk.
This story was originally published in May 2015 and updated on November 6, 2020 to remove some Creative Commons licensed photos and bring content in line with the current Lifehacker style.