Recently I was reading a Victorian era magazine with advice from mothers to mothers about scheduling. Most commonly the advice was about scheduling, and most commonly, the schedule included a morning conference in the kitchen with the cook and other hired help for the day's duties.
I'd like to introduce one of my favorite kitchen maids: the rice cooker.
My rice-cooker was a gift from some dear friends, and I would never have bought it for myself, but I'm glad somebody else did it for me. I would spend the money to replace it if it broke. It's been going strong now for over 10 years.
Ours is the ten cup capacity, and those are more expensive than the smaller kind.
Did you know you can cook more than rice in it? I often put rice, onions, peppers, seasonings and maybe some chopped celery or garlic in it, fill up with the correct amount of water, and then put in a couple boneless chicken breasts on top.
We really love the hickory smoked chicken breasts this way. I cut up the breasts when the chicken is done and we mix it all up with some cheese and have it in tortillas.
I've used lemon juice for part of the liquid before, added dill and parsley and
two or three boneless chicken breasts.
I should add that we use brown rice, so that's why it cooks long enough to
finish the chicken, and it takes a little longer than usual. I'm not sure how
it would work with white rice.
Red beans and rice in the rice cooker is also yummy.
And there's a delicious vegetarian lentil/rice taco mixture that works great in
the rice cooker.
The rice cooker works well for once a month cooking- you can mix up the raw ingredients (rice, seasonings, spices, herbs, chicken pieces), freeze them, and then just defrost it and dump it all in the rice cooker the day you want to have it, adding the proper amount of water.
Sounds good, DHM; that's one household servant we don't have. I do value Mr. Crockpot's services, though! lol We've had ours for fourteen years and still use it a lot. The Squirrels (at least the older ones) are rather fond of sauerkraut, so what we often do is put some sauerkraut into the bottom and then add some chicken breasts or sausage on top of that, and just let it cook. (If you add Thousand Island dressing on top of the chicken and maybe some cheese, our crockpot booklet then calls it Reuben Chicken and you can eat it on a bun.)
ReplyDeleteMama Squirrel was (coincidentally) just thinking about some of her favourite REALLY EASY recipes (the ones that are so easy they are almost a joke) and was thinking of putting some of them
on the Treehouse blog. Watch for upcoming posts.
I see we have alot in common. I like Victorian literature and I like my rice cooker as well. I just posted a quote from a "The Mothers Book" by Mrs. Child published in 1831. A throughly enjoyable little book on parenting that would probably not see the light of day today.
ReplyDeletespunky
OK, this is cruel, because I'm a gizmo junkie. So help me out here, por favor... what does a rice cooker do that a crockpot doesn't do? What makes it different? And how does it function differently from my double-decker Oster steamer?
ReplyDeleteEnquiring minds want to know... not that I could squeeze even one more gadget into my pantry! LOL!
Another blogger (Amy at Humble Musings maybe?) uses her rice cooker for oatmeal.
ReplyDeleteJennifer