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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.”
Hi Martha, Just wanted to let you know that I use my rice cooker for more than cooking rice. I am a widow and will buy a roast of beef and cut it into small meal size pieces and put a cut up small potato, onion and carrot in the bottom of the rice cooker and put the beef on top covered with 1/2 can of cream of mushroom soup and a small amount of water in the bottom, put lid on and turn it on. If the beef seems not as tender as I like I will take out the vegetables and put the roast bake for one more round. I also do this with long grain and wild rice and a chicken thigh or 2 on top of the rice and water. This cooks in one round! Love my rice cooker! I do not have to turn my oven on either! NJ
My biggest cooking challenge is in baking, especially low pt baking, and using my pressure cooker. I bought a Kuhn Rikon but haven’t used it much as I’m a little chicken. 🙂
My biggest cooking challenge is time. My husband and I both work full-time, I’m in school full-time, and we have a daughter about to enter middle school who has her own extracurricular schedule. It is important to us that we eat healthy and as a family when possible, it just is not always easy to get it on the table.
Cooking for 1 and not freezing meals. I don’t have a big freezer, so fix and freeze doesn’t work for me.
My biggest challenge is planning out dinners for the week that are healthy but hearty enough for my husband.
I never thought I had challenges, but I would have to say cooking rice has been a challenge! Just getting the heat right seems to be my problem, especially with rices other than the plain white converted rice. Brown rice can end up mushy or with water in the pot! I never considered using a special rice cooker, but obviously I should….
My biggest kitchen/cooking challenge is planning and preparing. I have been doing weight watchers for 6 weeks and I love it-but I need to plan and prepare better to prevent mishaps in unhealthy eating.
Planning is the biggest challenge to me.
My cooking challenge is planning what to eat for the week and to satisfy the “picky” eater.
My biggest cooking challenge is me.. I am an awful cook.