Rice Cookers are Made of Magic

Before I moved to Thailand and into an apartment with no kitchen I dismissed the rice cooker as an unnecessary toy that took up too much space in the kitchen cabinets.  After all, at home I was able to make perfectly good rice on the stove - no rice cooker needed.  Now of course, I don't know what I would do without my rice cooker.  Between it and my fridge it is the entirety of my kitchen here and figuring out the different things one can cook in a rice cooker has been a fun challenge.  Mind you, I have never actually cooked rice in my rice cooker.  Rice is not my favorite carb and eating it at lunch nearly every day plus dinner if I eat out pretty much fills my rice quota to excess.  In fact, I'd say the sole purpose of having a rice cooker is to avoid eating rice!

So, what do I make in my rice cooker?  Well, since I have a steamer I make a lot of vegetables.  Mostly kale.  But if you've ever tried steamed kale versus sauteed kale there's really no contest (sauteed takes the cake!).  So can you make sauteed kale in a rice cooker?  Well, not technically, but you sure can make it taste like sauteed kale!

Step 1: boil water in the base of your rice cooker.  If you're having pasta or boiling potatoes or pumpkin (these are pretty much the starches I eat from my rice cooker) now would be a good time to cook those things.
Step 2: add kale to the steamer part
Step 3: LIGHTLY drizzle olive oil over the kale (you want the kale to have olive oil but if you put too much its gross)
Step 4: get creative!  I personally have tried salt and pepper, chili pepper, a chili seasoning mix (meant for pork but who's cares?), even a teaspoon of sugar!  I've also tried adding some garlic - this still need to be perfected as steamed garlic is not even close to sauteed garlic but it still adds some nice flavor. Oh, and white wine - this is what I would use at home and its not quite the same (kind of like the garlic) but again, better than not having it.

my rice cooker in all its glory

steaming chicken

boiling pasta

kale goes in after pasta and chicken come out
like my cleaver? 

Yum!

And it tastes SO MUCH BETTER than plain old steamed kale - no really, olive oil for the win.  Also, be careful how long you steam it for - I find that perfect kale takes about 1 minute 30 seconds depending on how hot the bottom of the steamer is (how long you've been letting your water boil).  If it's in there too long it gets a little mushy for my taste.

By the way, if you're wondering why I don't just cook the kale in the bottom portion and pretend I'm sauteing it there is a simple explanation.  My rice cooker only turns on if there is enough pressure in the bottom part.  In other words the part that heats up is spring loaded and if there isn't anything weighing it down then it doesn't heat up.  Kale is nowhere near heavy enough to get any sort of heat (hence why I haven't figured out the garlic problem yet).

Previous to last night when I cooked meat in my rice cooker I steamed it.  And with enough seasoning it tasted pretty good even if it looked like steamed meat (by the way, if you've never steamed meat its not beautiful).  However, last night I decided to get creative.  I took some chicken and decided to try sauteing it instead of steaming it.  I took a chicken breast, seasoned it with some salt and black pepper and then put it in the bottom of my rice cooker (right over the weight contraption) where there was some honey, a bit of olive oil, and some chili pepper.  Unfortunately, this was not enough weight to get my rice cooker to heat up so I added the steamer and the lid and voila! enough weight.  Yay!  So last night's dinner was a delicious honey chili chicken with kale.

kale

Honey chili chicken

Dinner! 

Also, I have successfully used my rice cooker as a crock pot  Kind of.  It definitely takes longer and I didn't have broth or anything like that so I was limited in my ingredients.  That being said, the chicken I made was delicious.  And by purposefully wanting very little heat I didn't need to worry about the weight aspect!

So the moral of all these stories is that as long as you have a rice cooker you can steam, boil, saute, and crock pot!  So magical!  Actually, I really want to try making a cake in it too - I don't think it would heat evenly and I also don't want to make a cake just for me so I'm thinking of doing it for the end of the term for my classes... Obviously, this would be a box cake and I will let you know how it goes (if I do it)!!!