Spec me a rice cooker

Had £50 on an Amazon Gift Card sat next to my laptop so just ordered a Panda too! I really like eating rice, but we're never satisfied with the results from a pan and so tend to avoid it. Hoping this turns things around!

Now to start looking at tips of spices and other things to add to flavour the rice occasionally :D
 
squerble said:
Had £50 on an Amazon Gift Card sat next to my laptop so just ordered a Panda too! I really like eating rice, but we're never satisfied with the results from a pan and so tend to avoid it. Hoping this turns things around!

Now to start looking at tips of spices and other things to add to flavour the rice occasionally :D
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crushed garlic + using chicken stock instead of plain water. Now you have some delicious flavoured rice which would cost you like £5 at a restaurant.
 
squerble said:
It'll have to be vegetable stock as my partner is a vegetarian but I assume we could still see nice results?
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Yup, just elevates things a little.

I would stay away from seasoning, soy, salt, pepper....sounds strange, but rice is normally the plain part of the meal. Like naan with curry. The flavour is normally in the dish you eat it with, and the rice acts like a diluting element. So no need to add salt or soy sauce to the rice. Bit of garlic or stock for some umami is good though.
 
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Raymond Lin said:
Yup, just elevates things a little.

I would stay away from seasoning, soy, salt, pepper....sounds strange, but rice is normally the plain part of the meal. Like naan with curry. The flavour is normally in the dish you eat it with, and the rice acts like a diluting element. So no need to add salt or soy sauce to the rice. Bit of garlic or stock for some umami is good though.
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Thanks very much. Do you stir the crushed garlic in after soaking but before you start the cooking process, or is letting it sit on top OK?
 
squerble said:
Thanks very much. Do you stir the crushed garlic in after soaking but before you start the cooking process, or is letting it sit on top OK?
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You can stir it into the cold water, or sprinkle it.

Another thing, which I know now won't apply to you....but the principle is the same. Putting leftover KFC chicken directly onto the uncooked rice with the water and cook it together. The flavour from the chicken will end up permeating throughout the rice. Sure the batter will be soggy but it's left over KFC anyway, and you will have really tender juicy chicken afterwards.

This trick doesn't work for vegetables, it will just go to mush, but the principle is the rice will soak up any flavours you put it in with it, so you can cook a lot of things at the same time, making a 1 pot meal.
 
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Yea I just crush a couple of chicken oxo cubes in.

Unlike using a pan, unless you get the exact water ratio right, you end up draining off some of the stock again, so tricky to get right, whilst in the rice cooker it all gets absorbed into the rice.

If you want to make a more Mediterranean style rice, add some vegetable oil, chicken stock, tumeric, and some olives, sun-dried tomato and roasted peppers (usually all come in glass jars) that you have pre blitzed up a bit in a food processor before.
 
Christ, the cup size is very generous. Did one and a quarter cups for the two of us and we didn't eat it all :eek:

I also missed the part in the instructions to cook half a cup then throw it away before first use so I'm hoping I don't projectile vomit everywhere today :p
 
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jpaul said:
... which gets down to the issue that adding spices/garlic/turmeric/kfc into it, could permanently taint the flavour of subsequent rice
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It would if it weren't non-stick.

The instruction is just another form of "wash before use", just clean off the residue from the manufacturing process.
 
Raymond Lin said:
It would if it weren't non-stick.

The instruction is just another form of "wash before use", just clean off the residue from the manufacturing process.
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Yep, I just checked the YumAsia website and they had the following to say:

NOTE – All newly bought rice cookers will have some limited smell for the first few uses. Some people say that they smell new, of plastic or similar aroma. This is typical of all new appliances. Please do not be alarmed. This is why we suggest to run a rice cooking cycle through the cooker first and throw away the rice as it will help remove any manufacturing residual aromas.
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We gave it a good wash first, I'm hopeful it'll be OK.
 
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squerble said:
I also missed the part in the instructions to cook half a cup then throw it away before first use so I'm hoping I don't projectile vomit everywhere today :p
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We didn't do that either.

BUDFORCE said:
Yeah I just gave mine a little rinse out was fine.
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This is all we did.

squerble said:
Christ, the cup size is very generous. Did one and a quarter cups for the two of us and we didn't eat it all :eek:
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I don't know what the capacity of the supplied cup is, we just used the one we always used before, it holds around 180g of uncooked rice and that's about right for two of us.
 
Today I got a lovely Zojirushi NS-TSQ10 directly from Singapore. Made my first batch of rice, took an hour and I actually forgot about it but the keep warm function worked perfectly.

Huge thanks to @Raymond Lin for help locating it in Singapore as well. Next up, I need to get some way to store rice better than just in the bag.

Anyone got any recommendations?
 
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