Aunt Mary's graduation class. She was kept home for fear of the typhoid.

May 5, 2016 4:46 PM

"The Pot And How To Use It": Roger Ebert's long, slightly crazed love-letter to the humble rice cooker.
posted by Itaxpica (19 comments total)

Note to the mods: I noticed a bit too late that this is a double, though the link in the first post is to a different host of the article that is now broken.
posted by Itaxpica at 4:48 PM on May 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

Double, double, boil and bubble!
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:00 PM on May 5, 2016

Not what I thought this would be a long, slightly-crazed love letter to
posted by clockzero at 5:01 PM on May 5, 2016 [3 favorites]

I felt so sorry for him when he was deprived even of this dismal cuisine
posted by thelonius at 5:13 PM on May 5, 2016 [5 favorites]

We lost a legend when Ebert died.

It's loaded with salt, corn syrup, palm oil and coconut oils--the two deadliest oils on earth. But it's high fiber, you say? Terrific. You can die of a heart attack during a perfect bowel movement
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 5:20 PM on May 5, 2016 [13 favorites]

clockzero: "Not what I thought this would be a long, slightly-crazed love letter to"

Por que no los dos?
posted by Splunge at 5:23 PM on May 5, 2016

Did he ever write his book on rice cooker cooking?
posted by Max Power at 5:24 PM on May 5, 2016

He did, I have a copy around here somewhere.
posted by rewil at 5:38 PM on May 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

His fragrant rice and chicken recipe has become one of our favorite easy weeknight meals.
posted by briank at 6:22 PM on May 5, 2016 [4 favorites]

I posted the original version, but I love this essay so much I hope it stays up.
posted by anotherpanacea at 7:25 PM on May 5, 2016 [2 favorites]

Briank, I posted this today because I just cooked my first-ever all rice cooker meal: a hot-pot-less chicken miso hot pot recipe from Lucky Peach. It's basically exactly the same as that recipe, but with soy sauce, miso, and shaoxing wine instead of olive oil, and shiitakes added. It was stunning.
posted by Itaxpica at 7:27 PM on May 5, 2016

His fragrant rice and chicken recipe has become one of our favorite easy weeknight meals.

That recipe looks like it has too little water -- is that a misprint or a deliberate part of the recipe? I make one-pot rice meals all the time, sometimes in the rice cooker and sometimes not, but I usually use approximately a 2:1 ratio of water to rice unless liquid is being added in some other way.

I wish more cookbooks were written like this. Not quite stream of consciousness, but close enough that you see the thinking process and the joy rather than rigid lists of rules and steps.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:17 PM on May 5, 2016

I thought the exact same thing and nearly doubled the water. It came out a little too mushy, I should've stuck with the suggested amount. Maybe the chicken throws out liquid when it cooks?
posted by Itaxpica at 9:13 PM on May 5, 2016

The book is essentially the same as the blog post (and some of the comments), just with an awful lot of white space and a few more recipes. I bought it anyway.
posted by Shmuel510 at 9:16 PM on May 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

May be a case of using different rice. Long grain basmati needs the 2:1 ratio, but I find jasmine rice needs no more than 3:2 and I usually short that a bit unless it's very old (and thus dry) rice.
posted by tavella at 9:50 PM on May 5, 2016

I lived in a disgusting house with too many roommates (but had an ensuite) once, and made the prudent decision to somehow not use the kitchen. I had a kettle and a rice cooker with a steamer attachment, and I googled "can you cook everything in a rice cooker?" and yes, you can. With the blessing of Roger Ebert, I waded into that frontier!

I'd hardly recommend it as a lifestyle, but for a single college computer nerd, it was an interesting experiment, and I ate pretty healthy. In fact, 6 years later, when that cuisinart mini rice cooker got destroyed in a flood with the rest of my stuff, I held it and shed a few tears over its loss.
posted by euphoria066 at 10:00 PM on May 5, 2016 [2 favorites]

I wish more cookbooks were written like this. Not quite stream of consciousness, but close enough that you see the thinking process and the joy rather than rigid lists of rules and steps.

Food writing is always better than a mere recipe book! Dip Flash, may I therefore recommend to you:

- Claudia Roden's The Book of Jewish Food and A New Book of Middle Eastern Food which are magnificent blends of reminiscence, anecdote, kitchen experimentation, ancient tradition and folk tales.
- Nigel Slater's lyrical and delicious Notes from the Larder.
- Clarissa Dickson Wright's Food - like the late Fat Lady herself, it's brash, bossy, unrepentantly boisterous and often a bit... retrograde, shall we say, but it's tremendous fun.
- Finally, bona fide Australian treasure Stephanie Alexander's Cook's Companion, which is a bit more like a traditional cookbook, but full of the essential information a kitchen-lover needs to tinker and experiment and understand the act of cooking itself.
posted by prismatic7 at 12:00 AM on May 6, 2016 [2 favorites]

I use jasmine rice and the amount of liquid he recommends and it comes out fine every time. My one change is that I use chicken stock instead of chicken bouillon in water.
posted by briank at 5:46 AM on May 6, 2016 [1 favorite]

metafilter: Like soup only with less water, Albert Einstein.
posted by museum of fire ants at 12:04 PM on May 6, 2016