Non-Chess Post – Rice Steamers

 

    If you don’t own one of these handy little things, buy one! They are cheap…you can get one for as little as $20
     If you want to cook rice, they are great because they cook each grain of rice to perfection without any sticking. But, a rice cooker can cook more than rice: cabbage, potatoes, broccoli, carrots, cauliflower, steam hot dogs, asparagus, mac and cheese, bake a cake, make stuff like cheesy jalapeno bread, chili, lemony risotto with shrimp, banana bread, cook oatmeal…the uses are limitless. They do it fast, too.
     Health advice says we should eat fewer greasy fried foods and more vegetables, but taking time to cook is not something many of us want to do. Rice cookers allow you to fix a fast meal in a way that retains valuable vitamins and minerals, keeps food moist, keeps colors and flavors, is tender and they avoid nasty cooking oils and fats. Speaking of cooking food in oil, we don’t fry food very often at our house so when we do, it seems like it stinks up the whole house with the smell of grease.

Most people don’t notice the smell, but we do. In fact we ate at Steak and Shake a couple of weeks ago and when we got home, we could still smell the grease. How do they put it in that commercial? You to go ‘nose blind’ to the stench of grease if you fry all the time.
     I buy those small packages of mixed vegetables, usually broccoli and cauliflower, and throw in some baby carrots and in about 10-12 minutes have some nice, steamed veggies. It will steam a potato in about 15-20 minutes and I often fix a couple of extra, throw them in the refrigerator so that in the morning all that needs to be done is slice or dice and fry up some hash browns…I don’t eat healthy and avoid frying ALL the time.