What else can I do with my wonderful rice cooker?
Jo, London
“Oh, so much,” says Amy Poon, founder of Poon’s London. “I basically use my rice cooker like a [not so] slow cooker.” But to best understand what else you can do with it, Jo, you need to start at the very beginning and consider how rice cookers function. “They work on weight,” explains Ping Coombes, former MasterChef champion and author of Malaysia. “You add water and, as the rice cooks, the water soaks into the grain.” So, on that basis, you’re really looking at liquid-based things.
Let’s, however, stick with rice for a second, because there are many possibilities beyond steaming for a side. You could, for example, knock up a risotto, biryani, jambalaya, or, as Poon suggests, a “cheat’s” claypot rice. “Cut boneless chicken thighs into small pieces, marinate in potato starch, light soy sauce, white pepper, salt, sugar, shaoxing wine, sesame oil and finely chopped ginger, then mix with rehydrated Chinese (or other) mushrooms and spread the mixture over the rice.” Once cooked, garnish with chopped spring onions. Coombes, meanwhile, dials things up a notch with stories of a viral food hack from a few years back when some leftover takeaway fried chicken, stock, soy sauce and rice went into a rice cooker. “The crispy chicken became soft and was broken up into the rice with a dollop of butter,” she recalls. “I haven’t tried it myself, but that’s because I so seldom have any leftover fried chicken.”
