Teleidoscope

Fri, Mar 02, 2007

Rice Cooker

Posted at 6:03 pm MST to Technology

I'm impressed. Today I tried cooking brown rice in the new 'smart' rice cooker I bought a few weeks ago. Cooking brown rice at 6000 feet is a nuisance in and of itself, and rice cookers I've tried in the past at this altitude always scorched even plain white rice on the bottom and left the batch unevenly dry and sticky.

The new rice cooker -- the Aroma Sensor-Logic -- did a wonderful job. It cooked the rice to a state of moist fluffiness and then switched to warming mode. I just put in the rice and water, pushed the 'brown rice' button and let it go.

When it was done I stirred in a a couple of pinches of kosher salt. The rice I used is 'Lundberg Country Wild' which is a blend of different colors and varieties of rice and has more depth of flavor than plain rice. It's excellent for uses where the rice will be standing mostly on its own. For risotto and other applications where the rice will be blended with other ingredients, I use medium grain rice, either brown (if I can find it) or white.

I should note, however, that there are a few things I don't think brown rice works in. Wild Oats market has an excellent sushi bar. (This is one case where Wild Oats is much better than Whole Foods, where the sushi bar uses horribly bland rice. I don't think they season it properly.). They offer a choice of white or brown rice in their sushi, and I have found that Inarizushi (little pockets of deep-fried tofu filled with sushi rice) is just not right when it's made with brown rice. Brown rice sushi might work better for varieties of sushi that have more strong flavors.

Tomorrow I'm going to try steaming some cauliflower for cauliflower puree to experiment with some more of the rice-cooker's features.

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