My People

My People
My matched set of grandchildren - Oliver and Cosette

Sunday, December 26, 2010

I'm in love...

I'm in love.... with my new rice cooker.
Gotcha!
I have no idea how much they cost (since mine was a gift) but if you don't have one... and you want to eat healthy/cheaply.... buy yourself a rice cooker.
I'm having a blast cooking up the assorted grains and dried beans that I keep stocked in my pantry.
I've fixed... brown rice... super easy... split peas with garlic and ham... also easy and YUM!... this morning I made warm barley with organic pumpkin for breakfast... UH-mazing... and right now I'm doing a batch of spicy lentils. No recipes, really, it's just dump in the dried ingredient, add water and a few spices and... turn it on.
AND... it came with a steamer basket so I can steam veggies and fish! How cool is that?
AND... you can make soup in it!
Now I'm just waiting for the roads to thaw so I can buy more grains to practice on.
Any of y'all have rice cookers? Do you use them? Any tips or recipes you want to share?

*Just tasted the lentils and they are absolutely perfect! It's so hard to get lentils to be done and not mushy. Rice, rice baby! That rice cooker is the perfect lentil maker! Here's what I did:

pour one bag of lentils (one pound) into the cooker
add six cups of water
add 1-2 tablespoon of red curry paste
add one chopped onion
add a tbsp or so of turmeric (it's a yellow powder, very good for inflammation)
add a good sprinkle of black hawaiian salt (but any salt would do)

Plugged the rice cooker in and turned it on. I think they took about half an hour... and I stopped the cooking before the timer went off... when they were tender but not yet mushy. The flavor is amazing... the texture is awesome... warm, filling, healthy... and sooo cheap! A pound of lentils is less than a dollar and that batch will make several servings for me...

4 comments:

reneasskinnylove.blogspot.com said...

I got a georger Foreman multi cooker. Sounds very similar. It comes with a steamer basket on the top. This way you can make two things at once and dinner is done!

Becky said...

Very interesting about the rice cooker! I always wondered how a rice cooker differed from just cooking in a regular pot (which is also fairly easy), but it sounds like results are better. Good to know, because eating more whole grains and lentils is definitely in my new year's plans.

Myra said...

Hmmm, I got a rice cooker in October, didn't work, so I returned it, so I got turned off of rice cookers. Sounds like yours works great. Love new gadgets...that work!

Josh Lewis said...

You finally got a rice cooker! That thing is gonna be your new best friend. We use ours all the time. I couldn't imagine cooking rice or anything like rice without it.