Money Well Spent

I used to always cook my rice in the microwave oven (1 cup of rice, 2 cups water, and salt to taste in a large bowl cover and microwave 30 minutes at 30%) and it was fine. We didn’t eat too much rice and it was easy. The problem was white rice is kind of boring and I decided to start making brown rice, which we all like a lot better. So I went on a mission to find a good method to cook brown rice: I looked at the back of the package (always a good first resource) I looked in my extensive cookbook collection and I looked online. I found several methods and tried most of them. Unfortunately I really wasn’t too happy with any of them. They either took too long, took more attention than I wanted to give them or they were inconsistent in their results. One thing I kept seeing online was the Rice Cooker. I thought about it for a while and wondered would I ever really use it? Or if I bought one would it be yet another small appliance collecting dust in the back of the already crowded cabinet, only to be dug out from time to time to be played with and put back out of sight?

I was still contemplating the usefulness of the rice cooker when I happened to be walking through one of those big “super store” type stores and I took a stroll down the small appliance aisle. There were several to choose from and sitting off by itself was a sad little rice cooker with no extra bells and whistles and most importantly a price tag that read less than $15. I debated a while, would I ever really use it?? Well, it is cheap enough (hmmmm, would it work? After all, you do get what you pay for, right?) but I knew until I tried one out I would be wanting one. So, I decided what did I have to loose, $15 is certainly worth it to do some experimenting with and I wouldn’t be wasting too much money if I used it once and stuck it in the cabinet. I carefully placed the box in my shopping cart and made my way to the grocery department for a nice bag of brown rice. I took it home and read the little booklet that came with it quickly.

Into the kitchen the rice cooker and I traveled. All I had to do was add the rice, the water and seasonings, put on the lid, plug it in and turn the switch to cook. Easy enough. I checked it a few times and at the end of the cooking time sure enough the little switch changed from the cook position to the “keep warm” position. 

I finished cooking the rest of dinner and we sampled the first efforts of the new resident of the kitchen. It was really good, the brown rice was just the way we like it. Wow, that was really easy.

So that tiny amount of money (remember it was less than $15) is probably the best investment in kitchen equipment I have ever made. We eat brown rice at least once a week, many weeks several times.  So I can say if you want an easy way to add some whole grains to your diet and don’t want to have to spend a bunch of money look at rice cookers next time you are shopping.

As a note here, I will probably upgrade my rice cooker in the near future to one that can cook a bigger batch and maybe has some additional features, but I am really glad I spent the money to try this little one.