If someone told me I could only keep one kitchen appliance, I’d grab my rice cooker. The most basic model you can buy – one button that switches between Cook and Keep Warm.
It’s the thing parents give their kids heading off to college. The kid might barely know how to boil water, but the rice cooker will carry them through. You’d have to actively try to mess it up (1). My first one made it through college and three different apartments before it spectacularly shorted out and killed power to my entire building while I was out eating dinner. The second one, identical to the first, is still going strong.
I’ve cooked every type of rice you can think of in mine – spiced, flavored, topped with whatever. Congee. Soups and stews of all kinds. Cheesecake. Multiple varieties of rice cooker bread (2). Steamed stuff, the occasional fried thing. Some people think a rice cooker can only do one thing. That’s bullshit. Even when you’re completely drained and can’t be bothered to cook properly, you can dump everything in the pot and hit the button. Forty minutes later, you’ve got dinner.
I do cook rice on the stovetop sometimes. When I want more control over the texture, or honestly when I just feel like being more hands-on. But nothing beats prepping everything the night before, pressing cook, and waking up to hot fluffy rice. Since I work from home, I’ll sometimes chop ingredients during morning meetings, go about my day, and have lunch ready right when I need it. Plus leftovers for dinner.
It’s low-maintenance. It doesn’t take up much space. It’s cheap, relatively speaking. Reliable and boring. You see one in someone’s kitchen and you don’t think twice about it – it’s not a status symbol. But hot food is a luxury, actually. Some days are so hard that I’m on the verge of tears while rinsing rice at the sink, barely holding it together. I might not have much going for me, but when the rice cooker starts chugging and releasing steam with that smell of cooked rice, I’ve got the quiet satisfaction of knowing I managed to take care of myself.
The fancy models call to me sometimes when I’m wandering through department stores. Temperature controls, different automatic modes, all that. But the basic one has always done the job. All those extra features would turn my dependable cooking partner into another thing I’d have to tinker with. An expensive showpiece that demands attention. A machine I’d be scared of breaking. I think I’m good with my one button.
Now if only I could find replacement inner pots that don’t have teflon coating.
- One bad decision to make jelly in the rice cooker left it smelling like fake grape flavor for days. Then the smell degraded into something like rotting fruit as whatever was left festered in places I couldn’t reach. I finally fixed it by deep cleaning the whole thing with warm water and boiling a baking soda solution inside, but I’m permanently scarred from that experience.
- Don’t cheap out on the butter when you make rice cooker bread or everything will stick to the sides and burn.
