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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.”
My biggest challenge is cooking more vegetables that my kids will eat and cutting back on the unhealthy carbs like yellow rice and pasta.
My biggest challenge is not over making. We went from a family of 6 to just the 2 of us and I still cook like the kids live with us.
My most cooking challenge is space – I have a very small kitchen and an trying to figure out how in the world to fit all my kitchen gadgets into that space.
Quick and easy recipes certainly help!
My biggest cooking challenge is making rice, it never comes out right. Either to hard or to sticky.
My biggest cooking challenge is the planning, definitely not a planner.
My biggest challenge is planning and having enough time to actually cook what I have planned.
My Biggest cooking challenge is time…. Time to plan and time for prep.
My biggest cooking challenge is that my husband is a much better cook than I am, and I feel like I do not measure up. I would love a fool proof recipe, or way to cook, ie, the rice cooker, so that I could actually cook as great as he does!
My biggest problem is my hubby!! Fifty-five years of marriage–he has a nut allergy–death if ingested–and all crustaceans, although the seafood it is not a life or death issue. Me–fibromyalgia–supposed to be on a gluten free diet–not that I am a celiac, but highly advised because of the fibromyalgia. He is a meat and potatoes, pasta, mac and cheese, Shepard’s pie, eggs, rice and chicken man, with veggies,–and then is bored with his meals–and is very much overweight. Me–would eat seafood, rice, yogurt, veggies and fruits all the time. It is very difficult to cook for him, and not eat what I prepare for him. I am still working at home, designing and making elaborate dance costumes, and my time is limited each day. I find it difficult to stop working and prepare meals, thus the boring meals for him.–because they are easy and simple. To have to run out to the grocery store to buy foods for a dinner, is just not in the cards for me–that interruption in my day is not a good thing, and difficult to get back to what I was doing. Prefer to do a weekly shop. He does do some cooking, makes a great chilli–(that I cannot eat), and does make chow mein and egg foo yong, and will shop for his ingredients. But he is from the “old school” and had all his meals prepared by his mother–never learning to do very much–not even a laundry, (although I have shown him many, many times–but my reciprocal: when he learns to do laundry-I will learn to put gas in the car–74 years old and never have I put gas in a car!!!!)–I do crock pot when I think of it, but again, it is usually meat and potato foods. Enjoying your e-mails, but again, difficult to plan and put much time into preparation–at least until June–then my work will begin again in August. PS: Just saw that a place for Web site is below–did put mine in, but is in process of being re-done, so not much on it.
My biggest challenge is finding easy new recipes that don’t call for unusual ingredients I’ll never use again.