The Ultimate Rice Cooker Read online

  ALSO BY BETH HENSPERGER

  Bread

  Baking Bread

  Bread for All Seasons

  Beth’s Basic Bread Book

  Breads of the Southwest

  The Bread Bible

  The Pleasure of Whole Grain Breads

  Bread Made Easy

  Bread for Breakfast

  The Best Quick Breads

  The Bread Lover’s Bread Machine Cook book

  THE HARVARD COMMON PRESS

  535 Albany Street

  Boston, Massachusetts 02118

  www.harvardcommonpress.com

  © 2002 by Beth Hensperger and Julie Kaufmann

  Illustration © 2002 by Michael Cox

  First paperback printing March 2003

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Printed on acid-free paper

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the

  hardcover edition as follows:

  Hensperger, Beth.

  The ultimate rice cooker cookbook : 250 no-fail recipes for pilafs, risotto, polenta, chilis, soups, porridges, puddings, and more from start to finish in your rice cooker / Beth Hensperger and Julie Kaufmann.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 1-55832-202-7 (hc : alk. paper)

  1. Cookery (Rice) I. Kaufmann, Julie. II. Title.

  TX809.R56.H44 2002

  641.6’318—dc21

  2001039603

  Special bulk-order discounts are available on this and other Harvard Common Press books. Companies and organizations may purchase books for premiums or resale, or may arrange a custom edition, by contacting the Marketing Director at the address above.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Jacket design by Night & Day Design

  Book design by Marysarah Quinn

  Text illustration by Michael Cox

  These recipes were tested at sea level. If you are cooking at an altitude of over 3,000 feet, you may need to add additional liquid, especially when cooking brown rices.

  for GUHAN TOM DAVIS

  heart-to-heart and a bowl of Thai jasmine

  for MAX, MAYA, MOM, and BEN, who started it all

  contents

  acknowledgments

  it all started with a grain of rice

  the rice cooker MACHINE

  the perfect POT OF RICE

  simple everyday rices and LITTLE MEALS

  the family of PILAFS

  RISOTTO

  SUSHI

  the whole-grain COOKER

  polenta, grits, and HOMINY

  hot breakfast cereals and PORRIDGES

  beans and LEGUMES

  vegetables in the RICE COOKER

  whole-meal steam CUISINE

  dim sum, dolmas, and tamales: LITTLE BITES

  sweet puddings and fruit DESSERTS

  custards and steamed PUDDINGS

  alchemy for RICE LEFTOVERS

  the basics:homemade STOCKS

  online and mail-order RESOURCES

  index

  acknowledgments

  The rice angel is a guardian for people who appreciate rice. We met a lot of angels disguised as humans who not only appreciate, but unabashedly love rice and their rice cookers, while working on this book.

  Thank-you’s to the following for contributing their time and expertise to this work: food writer Lynn Alley; “Aunt Joan” Billheimer; Naoko Boerger; Matthew Bun son; Paul Mizukia, Michelle Camerlengo, and Jim Rogers of Panasonic/Matsushita Consumer Elec tronics Company; California Cooperative Rice Research Foundation, Inc., Biggs, California; Paul Cha; barley lover Jean Clem of Western Trails Food Products; Jesse Cool; restaurateurs and culinary intelligentsia Elaine Corn and David SooHoo of Bamboo Restaurant, Sacramento, California; Joyce Gemperlein; Joyce Goldstein, for her generous information on Italian rices; Barbara Grunes; Glenda Hildon of Rice Specialty, Inc.; Judith Dunbar Hines; Hitachi America Limited; Ming-man Hsieh; Atsuko Ishii; Sharon Jones, for the big burlap bag of Daawat basmati; Asian food specialist and San Francisco Chronicle columnist Joyce Jue; Carolyn Jung; Caryl Levine and Ken Lee of Lotus Foods; Grace Liu; Deborah Locke of RiceTec, Inc.; Amanda Lorenzo of Aroma; Jacquie McMahan, the matriarch of California rancho and Mexican cooking; plant breeder John Neal of Lundberg Family Farms; Tamera Moore, for critiquing all the rices; Marianne New of Zojirushi America Corporation; Sharon Noguchi; Mexican culinary tour guide Marge Poore; Toni Ramsaur of Gibbs Wild Rice; food writer Rick Rogers; Kimberly Park of the USA Rice Federation, Houston, Texas; Diana of Sanyo Electronics Company; creative consultant Julia Scannel; Hiroko Shimbo; U.S. Department of Agri culture Agricultural Research Center, Beaumont, Texas; Mary Weide, for sharing all that Thai jasmine; Andrew Whitfield, who taught Beth how to cook short-grain brown rice; Williams-Sonoma; Feng-Chih “Lucy” Wuchen; Martin and Susan Yan. And to all of the members, past and present, of the English Conversa tion Club at Escondido Elementary School for so generously opening their kitchens and their hearts.

  Our thanks also go to Pam Hoenig and Julie Stillman for their marvelous editing; Valerie Cimino, managing editor; the sales, marketing, production, and publicity managers and assistants at Harvard Common Press; and Martha Casselman, our stalwart and dedicated literary agent, who loves leftover rice in her soup.

  it all started with a grain of rice

  Hajimé choro choro

  Naka pa ppa

  Akago naité mo

  Futa toru na.

  At first it bubbles

  And then it hisses

  Even if the baby is crying

  Don’t remove the lid.

  Japanese nursery rhyme on how to cook rice

  translated by Elizabeth Andoh

  Once upon a time, rice was just rice—in our lives anyway. You planned a meal and rice seemed to be the right starch to serve with it. You placed the saucepan on the stove, measured some water into it, pulled down the bag of rice, measured it into the cup, and poured it into the boiling water. As the water came back to a boil, on went the cover and, when the timer beeped, you ate the rice.

  That was before we met the rice cooker. Since then, the world of rice—the amazing array of rice available on every supermarket and specialty grocery shelf, where it grows, its lore and history, sharing recipes, the writing of this book—has become an everyday part of our lives.

  To an American cook, the electric rice cooker has been, up to now, a take-it-or-leave- it kitchen appliance. I mean, what’s a stove for? But to many Asian-American cooks and cooks throughout Asia, the rice cooker is an absolutely essential appliance for everyday meal preparation. It is the method of choice for cooking rice in Japanese and Chinese restaurants (most of the rice cooker manufacturers have a commercial division). Since in many of these diets rice is eaten three times a day, the rice cooker is always on in every home. There are even small ones with a handle to carry while traveling on vacations and business trips. Well, why eat less-than-perfect rice when you don’t have to?

  Rice cookers appeal to a busy cook for a number of reasons, the first being you may have heard one of your friends tell you how great it is. It is an appliance well suited to a limited cooking space (it is the cooking tool of choice in college dorms and is great up at the ski cabin) and boasts easy cleanup. It is a closed-environment, slow-cook method that has ended up a cross between a countertop slow cooker, an oven clay pot, and a stove top saucepan. Since it is a one-button technology, there is virtually no maintenance.

  There is not much written about rice cookers in
general. “I will be interested in seeing what you can do with the rice cooker,” Janice Cole, professional cook and editor of Cooking Pleasures magazine, told us. “I have never made anything but plain rice in mine.” This is the sentiment shared by the majority of cooks we talked to. Beyond the slim pamphlet enclosed with the unit, not much information on how to use it exists in print. “In Asia, a rice cooker is part of a normal household,” Julie explained during one of our early discussions about the appliance. “It is like an iron or a toaster here. Why write a book about how to use an iron or toaster? Everybody just knows.”

  So, here is a book that fills that gap. How to use your rice cooker to make foolproof everyday basic rice, recipes for the new rices on the market, and beautiful pilafs make up the core of the book. But there is a host of other possibilities, from risottos and hot breakfast cereals to incredible desserts, made start to finish in your rice cooker. Dim sum and sushi rice, often intimidating, are within the grasp of even the novice cook. But if all you want is to make some good plain rice, this book is also for you. All instructions are presented as simply, but also as comprehensively, as possible, to be of practical use in every type and size of machine.

  In every section there are plenty of step-by-step instructions, hints about the machine itself, and delicious recipes, from plain everyday “I don’t have time to think about it” to boldly seasoned. Your rice cooker is a versatile, convenient kitchen appliance that embraces a style of cooking that emphasizes health and natural ingredients. The basic principles of the venerable cooking centers of the world are represented—France, Mexico, and Italy, as well as India, Japan, and China. Rices from around the world, every one available on the market today, are covered in depth—where they come from, how to cook them, and ways to incorporate them into your meals.

  Whether you are buying a new rice cooker or are an accomplished cook with an old model, may these recipes bring you as much gustatory pleasure as they have to us.

  SCIENCE , MYTHOLOGY , AND THE ORIGINS OF RICE

  The role that rice plays as an essential food in the Eastern Hemisphere, along with being one of the first gathered wild grains in the prehistoric Neolithic era, associates the grain with both powerful spiritual symbolism and physical nourishment. It has been postulated that the very act of planting the first seeds was a magico-religious act to appease the local reigning gods, although scientifically speaking, far less is known about the beginnings of rice than any other cereal grains. There is a romantic saying that rice was the first food plant cultivated after the loss of Paradise when heaven and earth became separate worlds. One scientific source has rice growing wild on the ancient supercontinent of Gondwanaland, which split into Africa, Australia, Southeast Asia, South America, and Antarctica. The first cultivation of rice is proven by archaeological remains in Southeast Asia between India and China, and in India.

  The worship of food plants is known to have been an integral part of religions, coming down through the millennia to become an aspect of modern world formal religions, as well as folklore. Rice is intertwined with the powerful presence of Shiva, the ancient Indian god who is the father of the Hindu panopoly of deities. Failing to create the perfect food to tempt the Shakti (enlivening female force or consort) of his affections, she died a virgin and from the bowers of her tomb sprang the perfect food, rice. Whether the Indonesian Samyan Sri, Thai rice goddess Maeae Posop, Indonesian Dewie Sri, or Chinese-Taoist Tou Mu (the Mother of the Rice Measure, keeping the divine records of life and death), all rice goddesses are virgin deities, their gift to mankind, associating the grain with fertility, abundance, and purity. The mysteries associated with cultivating rice have existed for so many centuries (archaeological discoveries in the Indus River valley have unearthed rice dating back to 4530 B.C.) that these mythological stories have become interrelated with the actual grain right up into our present time.

  The Indian cultures of antiquity were all built around rice-growing areas, and rice, the ideal plant for the humid tropics, is still the most extensively cultivated of any food grain. Rice is mentioned in ancient Chinese scrolls (there are recipes and references to fan from the eighth century B.C.), and is known as “the good grain of life.” It is the staple food of over half the world’s population from India throughout Indonesia and the Philippines to China, Korea, and Japan, and all the islands from Taiwan to Madagascar. It can be planted in aquatic paddies, our most familiar vision of rice, but also as an upland crop called hill paddy rice, in tropical areas with lots of rainfall.

  The traditional rituals that accompany every step of the cultivation and harvest acknowledge a belief system that a soul lies within each and every grain. Rice is always considered female in Eastern cultures, and while men can prepare the land and irrigation system, it is the women who plant seedlings, harvest, and winnow. Harvests were not considered joyous, but were often accompanied by lamentations as the body of the “spirit” was reaped. In ceremonial plantings, seeds are returned to the gods via the soil. Even today, there are hand-carved “demons” dotting the rural Indian countryside positioned to guard the life-giving fields of rice from invisible forces. Rice dolls, fashioned from the sacred first cuttings, give the precious spirit of the rice a home until the next planting. In Sri Lanka, astrologers a the heavenly logistics of when to plant the rice.

  Although the Japanese culture is intertwined with the importance of rice as a basic food, rice did not reach Japan until the second century B.C. The emperor, regarded as a direct descendant of the sun, planted his own personal paddy field of rice on the palace grounds. In Japan the rice deity is Inari, the rice-bearer, and miniature shrines to him are scattered throughout the rural countryside and villages. On February 12, the Japanese celebrate a popular folk festival, Hatsuuma, in the presence of the Inari shrines to pray for a good rice crop.

  the rice cooker MACHINE

  Congratulations on your purchase of an electric or electronic rice cooker. It’s versatile and reliable, a very nifty little bit of technology. It can make perfect rice and, as you are about to find out, much more. The electric rice cooker is a kitchen appliance that was born in the climate of postwar Japan. Available since the early 1950s, when the first machines were manufactured by Toshiba, the rice cooker is a contemporary of the electric blender, part of the surge for faster, more convenient food preparation with the aid of the widespread availability of electricity as a relatively cheap power source. The current variety available is astonishing: The smallest, simplest models can be had for about $15; large, sleek, technologically advanced versions easily run into the hundreds of dollars.

  At its simplest, the rice cooker machine is a round, removable, aluminum bowl that sits atop a metal heating element. The heating element looks like a solid metal spring the size of a quarter. It automatically can “sense” when the water is boiled off by the temperature inside the pot (the amount of water added determines the length of the cooking time, not the amount of rice) and automatically shuts the unit off. It has a round metal or glass lid with a knob handle.The bowl has a rim or handles for lifting it in and out of the appliance ousing. There is a switch to push down for turning on the appliance. The switch pops up when the machine turns off. Today’s models are remarkably similar in style to those first ones made by the major Japanese companies still in business today: Hitachi, Zojirushi, Sanyo, Toshiba, and Panasonic/National. Newcomers include Aroma, Rival, and DuPont.

  The shape of the rice cooker bowl was designed to mimic the shape of the okama, the traditional Japanese metal pot for cooking rice, with a curved bottom and wooden lid (dlightly curved bottom is well known as an efficient heat conductor as far as cooking pots are concerned. It enables food to be cooked efficiently within the confines of the pot using the least amount offuel. The okama was used for many centuries over an open fire or on top of a wood-burning stove. With the gradual modernization of Japanese homes, first in the cities and then in the outlying rural villages, housewives adopted cooking in the electric rice cooker as a simple al
ternative to using up limited space on their new electric or gas stoves. Half a century later, the electric rice cooker is a commonplace appliance in every Japanese home.

  If you eat rice more than a couple of times a week, a rice cooker is a sensible investment. It does an exceptional job of cooking rice and other whole grains, as well as being very durable.

  TYPES OF RICE COOKERS

  There are two basic categories of rice cookers available on the market today: on/ off and fuzzy logic. Within these categories there are five types of machines: cook-and-shut- off, cook-and-reduce-heat, deluxe electronic, basic fuzzy logic, and induction heating. These range from simple to sophisticated, each reflecting a step in the evolution of the rice cooker. You can recognize the types not only by the range offeatures, but by the price. Choose your rice cooker by first analyzing what type of cooking you want to do with it. If you make only white rice and steam a few vegetables, go for a simpler machine. If you want the full range of timing and cooking capabilities, from porridge to brown rice, go for a more elaborate model, but realize that you won’t be able to use it as a steamer. Models are labeled for what the cooker will do, such as Rice Cooker/Warmer or Rice Cooker/Steamer/Warmer. If you do a lot of steaming or make multicomponent steamed meals, look for a model with a large steamer tray or a set of baskets; this feature is not included in fuzzy logic cookers. We are not going to recommend any particular models since technology is constantly being updated and model numbers change often. Just stay with one of the reliable brands and shop for the features you desire.

  Rice cookers come in standard sizes: the 3- or 4-cup capacity (small), 5- or 6-cup (medium), and 8- or 10- or 14-cup (large) models. Many manufacturers have models that can hold up to 20 cups for home use. The jumbo rice cooker, or deluxe cooker, has a capacity of 15 to 30 cups. This is a cook-and-reduce-heat type machine that is great for large families, entertaining, and small cottage businesses. It is available in restaurant supply stores.