37 new of 205 responses total.
Cooked rice does not grow on trees.
Neither do spastic colons.
Do nonspastic colons? Pressure cooked rice gets very thoroughly cooked. With brown rice we add 1.3 cups water per cup of rice. White rice would probably be less. If you cook with more water, the rest of it goes into the air along with wasted heat.
re #171 How long does that take? Do you use a pressure cooker pot on a stove?
Maybe 5 minutes to come to pressure, then 5 to come down? I never timed it. It is does before the rest of the meal. Yes pressure cooker on stove. We also have one large electric pressure cooker which is more efficient but too large (nuisance to clean). We have at least 10 pressure cookers of various sizes and designs, and take a small one bike camping with us. I wonder if we could cook oatmeal in it (dont' let the pressure come up too far).
What the hell kind of rice cooker causes steam to condense on windows, puddle on sills, and rot the house frame???
I dunno, but I do know that in the winter, when the air is very dry in our apartment- a little steam only does good things. We tend to use the 'pot on the stove' method of rice making though- not a specific rice steamer...
Our house is well sealed, and adding steam to the air causes problems. Our highest January heating bill was $60 (electric). DO the rest of you not believe in global warming or just not personally want to do anything about it? Some friends put in a geothermal heating system at great expense but never insulated or weatherstripped and they now pay $180 in January for heat.
WTF Sindi? The occasional use of a rice cooker is going to top the balance?
re #176 My electric bill in Jan was about $60, too. I do my part for low carbon footprint but I also have to do my part for low mildew in rainforest climate. I'm betting the cooking we do at home(rice rarely) is way more efficient time, money, energy than restaurant or frozen microwavable.
I am pointing out that there are multiple reasons to cook efficiently. Seattle does not typically go to -10F in January. Tod, do you cook things in tightly sealed pots? I agree that taking a car to a restaurant wastes far more fuel that even boiling a lot of water off rice into the air.
My electric bill in the winter was about $30. Our gas bill was higher, but that's divided up between all the units in the building. Sindi- some of us also live in apartments that are run by corporations that REALLY frown on tenants making their own changes to the apartments. So we do what we can. And for goodness sake, we're not talking about THAT much steam! It's a rice cooker, not a steam engine.
Um, we got a console model rice cooker that sits on the floor, is about 4 feet high and 3 feet across, and weighs 200 pounds. Whenever we use it, all the windows fog up, the walls get wet, and the neighborhood experiences brownouts from the electricity consumption. If we run it with the windows open, the weather bureau issues a local dense fog warning. None of these wimpy table model rice cookers for us! Oops, almost forgot: :)
John Remmers, kicking it hard core.
re #179 Tod, do you cook things in tightly sealed pots? I haven't entertained the idea of a pressure cooker in my house simply for safety reasons. In the 80's, a friend of mine suffered major burns when the pressure cooker where he worked (Big Boy's on 9mile in St.Clair Shores) exploded. The risk doesn't seem equitable to energy savings. Perhaps the new stovetop pressure cookers are better these days?
One thing I will mention even though it doesnt have much to do with kitchen gizmos is that people should pay attention to their reactions regarding Sindi's comments about how cooking inefficiently is contributing to global warming. That is why expecting people to change any of their habits out of the good ness of their heart is never going to work. You have to make policy that forces them to change their habits. Rice cookers probably dont use enough energy to really come into play here but I'll bet that if it cost 5 cents to cook rice with a pressure cooker and $5 to cook rice with a rice cooker, a lot of people would switch to using pressure cookers.
I'm intrigued simply because my rice cooker works like crap when it cooks brown/basmati rice. If I can do it in the same time as white rice by using a pressure cooker then I'm interested. I would need assurances that a pressure cooker isn't going to harm someone, though.
I love that....I won't make changes out of the goodness of my heart. Just because I use my rice cooker maybe once a month I am somehow condemning the earth. Nevermind my avid recyclying/reusing or other things we have done to our home to make it more energy efficient. Next you'll be telling my not owning a pressure cooker is me buying into a patriarchal conspiracy. I don't use a pressure cooker because A) I don't own one and B) I try to not own a ton of stuff in my kitchen. I hate being cluttered in my kitchen. I have considered getting a pressure cooker simply because I love watching them get used on Iron Chef. But I'm not there yet.
We have been pressure cooking for 30 years or so and never had an accident. We have pressure cookers from the 50s and later. It is the ones from the 40s that were not working right. They are by far the easiest (not just the fastest) way to cook grains and beans (it helps to presoak the beans but it not necessary). Or even potatoes. We use the special weights that show pressure (5 10 15 lb) and potatoes need 5 lb, brown rice and beans 15 lb. Brown rice takes much longer to cook than white rice. Probably the rice steamers assume white rice, you add the amount of water that corresponds to the 20 min it takes to cook rice (it takes 20 min to boil off then the cooker senses that the temperature has gone up and turns of). YOu could try adding twice the water for brown rice. Pressure cookers do not burn things because they cook mainly with steam, not just with bottom heat. My mother used hers for potroasts. We tried a microwave rice cooker which took much longer than pressure cookers.
Where can I find pressure cookers which use weights? Or is it better to use the electronic ones with auto shutoff?
resp:186 That is my point. *everyone* thinks what they are doing is reasonable. I know I sure think that I am doing my part. And no...using a rice cooker is not especially harmful to the environment. And fwiw, I use the stove top method which is probably the least efficient. Anyways, I seriously doubt that even the highest energy taxes in the land would deter someone using a rice cooker since they just dont use that much energy. But think about how you feel when someone suggests to you that you should give up the rice cooker. That is how some folks feel about their SUVs. Guilt will not get them to stop buying them just like no amount of guilt will stop anyone in this conversation from cooking rice in the way that works best for them.
We made a big pot of rice last night in the rice cooker and I was sure to towel off the windows and sills while wearing hipwaders. ;)
http://tinyurl.com/6gr9b3 You want my rice cooker? You're going to have to pry that baby from my cold dead hands.
From my cold dead chubby fingers! Look a nice one with a dial setting (instead of weights) http://tinyurl.com/4qsand
Yeah, you would have to pry my rice cooker from my fingers too! http://www.clearwaterbeachkiku.com/images/ImgLeft_About.jpg
hahahahahah!!!!
Good one, Lynne!
re #193 Why does that guy have my thong on his head?
Dang. I guess I'll have to quit cooking my rice on a pile of burning car tires. I'm really going to miss that special smoky tang.
I got a new gadget - a milk frother for quick and dirty caps at home. Nuke a little milk with or without flavoring. Froth for 20 seconds. Pour coffee through. Enjoy. It works. http://tinyurl.com/5w4evp
You put milk into your dirty capacitors? Does it fix the bulging problem?
Every time. Almost.
Is there some additional ingredient you need to add to them? Hot glue?
resp:199 That looks almost exactly like a gadget a friend of mine used to bring on backpacking trips - to stir koolaid. It is kind of an in joke but we have a mutual friend who is both into backpacking and into gadgets. He always made a point to pack as lightly as possible but would also almost always bring one fancy made for backpacking gadget. My friend with the koolaid stirrer (which may have really been a milk frother) would always try to also bring a gadget on every trip except he would try to make his as useless as possible in order to tease our other friend.
Boy, your friends go for the jugular, eh? ;-)
Yeah. That same friend with the stirrer once went out and bought a $400 tent which made the other friend rather jealous. Once the first friend realized that, he started setting up his tent in his living room and talking about it all of the time to the gadget head friend. The gadget head friend was really excited to see it in action so to speak. Then, when they next went camping together the guy with the nice tent brought his $15 K-Mart pup tent and said that the $400 tent was too nice to use outside ;)
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