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My favorite kitchen tool for eating great and managing my weight is the slow cooker.
If I had to choose a first-runner up, it would be a rice cooker, so today I’m giving one away. You’ll find all the details at the end of the post.
As Nigella Lawson persuasively explains in her wonderful cookbook, Nigella Kitchen: Recipes from the Heart of the Home (affiliate link), “…It isn’t a coincidence that all rice-eating cultures have a version: these things, which range from basic to luxury, really do work. I cannot tell you now much easier it makes your life when you can come home, pour rice and water into the cooker, flick on a switch and just walk away without having to think about it again. And this makes a difference across the board: from feeding children to giving dinner parties…”
The Best Way to Cook Rice
Google, “The Best Way to Cook Rice” and be prepared to be overwhelmed by all the different theories and approaches, from simple to complex, on the best way to cook rice. Just reading some of these recipes made my head hurt. No wonder people get overwhelmed in the kitchen.
My approach to life and cooking is to keep things as simple as possible. Because if things are simple enough, we might actually do them!
The best way to cook rice is with a rice cooker (affiliate link).
Author of The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science, J. Kenji López-Alt agrees: “There’s no easier, more foolproof way to cook rice and other grains that in a rice cooker. Sure you can cook rice in a pot, carefully monitoring the flame, hoping that you’ve added just the right amount of water and that your rice isn’t burning on the bottom, and taking it off the heat at just the right moment, but if you’re anything like me, you’ve burned one too many batches to fuss with that method any more. With a rice cooker, you just add your rice and water, shut the lid, flip the switch, and go, with the added advantage that it’ll keep the cooked rice (or there grain) hot for hours.”
If you don’t have a rice cooker, two other easy options are to:
Some of my favorite easy healthy Weight Watchers friendly rice recipes include:
- Hot + Cold Chicken with Brown Rice Bowl
- Brown Rice Tomato Basil Salad
- Weight Watchers Easy Arroz Con Pollo (Chicken with Rice)
- Slow Cooker Cheesy Chicken & Rice Casserole
- Savory Slow Cooker Brown Rice + Lentils
- Slow Cooker Rice
- Slow Cooker Turkey and Wild Rice Casserole
- Crock Pot Wild Rice
- Fried Rice with Vegetables + Ham
- Creamy Slow Cooker Rice Pudding
The Best Way to Cook Rice Cooker Giveaway Details
TO ENTER
1. Leave a comment below answering the question, “What is your biggest kitchen/cooking challenge?”
A winner will be selected at random and announced next Sunday.
Good luck!
3/26/17: This giveaway is now over.
The winner is Carole Cushman who commented, “My biggest challenge is planning and then sticking to it!”
Congratulations Carole! Please contact us at support@simple-nourished-living.com to claim your prize.
And thanks so much to everyone who took the time to participate by sharing your biggest kitchen challenge. I loved reading all your comments and learning more about you.
Notes from The SweetHome review site on the best rice cooker (affiliate link)” After more than 100 hours of research and testing, cooking more than 200 pounds of rice, and talking with rice experts specializing in Japanese, Thai, and Chinese cuisine, we recommend the Hamilton Beach 37549 2-to-14-cup Digital Simplicity Rice Cooker and Steamer for most people.
It’s an outstanding value that’s well-suited to most households that want the ease and convenience of no-fuss, no-burning cooked rice.
It makes delicious short-grain and medium-grain white rice—the variety most commonly made in a cooker—faster and better tasting than models 10 times the price.
It offers features you tend not to see on rice cookers at this price, most notably a delay-start mode, stay-warm functions, an insulated lid to hold in steam, large capacity, and a heavy, quality cooking pot.
It’s by far the best low-priced cooker we’ve found.”
I’d say my biggest challenge is I live alone, cooking for one can be challenging! I’ve come to the conclusion I’d rather have leftovers than then eat in a hurry……….that leads to unhealthy eating habits! I’ve learned so much from your site & thank you for that 🙂
Preplanning and variety are my biggest obstacles while trying to prepare healthy meals.
My biggest cooking challenge is not cooking so much food at once! Sounds pretty silly, I know, but after cooking for 4 kids (and their countless friends) for so many years, I find it difficult in cooking for two, leading to difficulty with portion control. Upside is lots of leftovers for lunches!
My biggest challenge is cooking things everyone (my husband and 2 kids) will like and eat that is weight watcher friendly for me!
My biggest cooking challenge is creating meal plans so that I get all of the food groups covered.
Right now, it’s meal prepping – which is actually a strength of mine. However, I let pregnancy exhaustion get the best of me
my dilemna is which spices go well with certain rice dishes- sometimes i cook “out-a-sight” rice meals…..by accident! and, other times the meal is too bland and/or incorrectly spiced by a neurotic cook(me! ) i’d love to know the outcome of my own creativity before i actually ruin dinner?!!
I never have enough time.
My greatest challenge is eating regular meals. I’m a shift worker, and I find that I can prepare fine and have adequate food for when I am on shift, but when I’m off and at home, I seem to forget I need to eat… There always seems to be something else to do. As a result, when I realise that it’s time to eat, it’s too late to cook as I am starving, so anything on hand gets stuffed in my mouth.
My biggest challenge is vegetables. I cook the same ones all the time and get bored. Or I try new recipes and don’t like them. I could eat beets everyday and not be bored but I know I need variety for healthy eating. If I could conquer veggies I could be a semi-vegetarian. Help!