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> one off appliances

I have an instant pot as well. If I have to cook myself, I put everything I have got rice, lentils, chicken bullion powder, frozen chicken breast, frozen vegetables, cut pieces of carrot, red chili powder, ginger powder, garlic powder, black pepper, the works everything goes in the instant pot and I go to my MS Teams meetings. Food cooks and goes into "keep warm" setting.

In fact, that's quite literally what I did almost every morning for a bit last year when I was by myself. However, "normal people" in my family refuse to eat this even though I assure them it is perfectly edible.

It is perfectly rational to want to minimize the amount of time you spend cooking.

Edit: the rice cooker inner pot that I have is non-stick and is scratched up beyond all recognition but still they prefer using that to cook rice over my instant pot (with a superior stainless steel inner lining).

Are they concerned about bacterial growth? As long as you hit the critical temperature and time during cooking, extended warmth should be fine, right?

You might need an agar plate experiment to convince them, hah.

In some households, rice cookers are somewhat of a religious / commitment based relationship. The one that has always provided the cooked rice will continued to be trusted to provide the cooked rice. And it shall not be tossed aside when a more complex or shinier model is available. Almost like a favorite cup or bowl.

A colleague described to me after his time living in Japan encountering wonderful single-box puddings that could be prepared in a rice cooker. Unfortunately the rice cooker in a Japanese household is for cooking rice. Not for cooking puddings. The product probably failed.

It's probably more about texture.

I'd assume at least some of those ingredients are overcooked, unless OP carefully chose that particular combination (and used frozen chicken).

The "OG tv dinner" / "what can be cooked in the same time" problem has always fascinated me. I expect somewhere on the Internet there's a list of combinations and cooking methods.

I had the same issue with crock pot meals and instant pot meals. The biggest culprit for me is a homogeneous texture (I have the same annoyance with making stuff in higher end blenders). You'll notice "high end" recipes suggest something to change up the texture; like add something crunchy after cooking. I think that makes a huge difference.

The whole point of this exercise is to be ideally no effort or if not low effort. Cooking multiple dishes is out of scope here. The chicken is indeed frozen chicken breast from Sam's club or Costco depending on which membership I have.

Interestingly enough, the longer I cook, the dryer the chicken feels. At some point, the whole thing becomes one mess except the chicken withdraws and feels very dry. It isn't supposed to be a fancy feast. All I'm saying is it is an option for when we don't want to actually put effort into cooking.

Semi off topic. If you have really ripped up non-stick. Probably worth getting rid of it especially if you have kids (not saying you do). The risk of chunks of stick coating being carcinogenic seems to be trivially mitigated by replacing the object.

s/bullion/bouillon

I've been cooking regularly (3-5/wk) for 15 years and I hate making rice on the stovetop. Maybe I'm just secretly a terrible cook, but at best my success rate with stovetop rice is 50%. The other half the time it's either under or overcooked, and once I've opened the lid to evaluate I've never been able to "fix" it. Maybe all my stovetops have somehow been more irregular than yours.

Thus, I've used rice cookers for most of those 15 years. The $15 no-name brand works great! Never under or over-cooks the rice! I have the Zojirushi Fuzzy now, and I love it. I find its rice slightly better than the bargain-bin rice cooker made, and I'm spoiled to it now.

Generally I'm also somewhat dismissive of one-use appliances. But for me, a rice cooker is a must-have if I'm making rice with any regularity. It takes up maybe a cubic foot of space, stores really easily when it's not being used, and is pretty easy to use and clean. I wish all my small appliances were so convenient (where do people store such tall blenders?!).

Have you tried the "cook it like pasta" method? I never had consistent success with the traditional way, but abandoning all timing and measurement in favor of simply pouring some rice in a pot full of salt water, boiling until it gains the right texture, then straining has led to reliable satisfaction.

I can make perfect stovetop rice 100% of the time, if I'm paying attention. If I'm cooking for guests, that's what I'll do. Thing is, I'm an extremely distractable person, and I've burned my rice more times than I can count.

My little zojirushi lets me get some rice started, go on a bike ride, forget about the rice, watch a youtube video, send some emails, remember the rice in a sudden panic, and happily find that it still came out nearly perfect.

Plus the Zojirushis last forever. We're about year 20 of ours.

Their batteries, however, do not. Apparently on the model we have it requires quite a bit of disassembly and it's soldered in. In Asia it's expected to just be plugged in all the time and so the battery is just backup for when the power goes out. We, however, don't make rice all that often and so it gets put away after use.

I haven’t figured out how to change the time on my rice cooker anyways, and I’m pretty sure much of Asia (at least surely in China) will unplug rice cookers not in use (we got power outlets with switches).

Maybe a rice cooker doesn’t make sense for most westerners but for Asians it is typically a must. I wouldn’t be surprised if many homes in Japan are using their rice cooker more than coffee machine - another one-off kitchen gadget that everyone more or less can agree is a kitchen stable.

In Asia you wouldn’t have a coffee pot but you would probably have an electric kettle.

Isn’t not having a kettle an American thing?

I think so. I didn’t see any in American hotels until about 10 years ago.

> I still don’t get why people buy these one off appliances like rice cookers.

I can set a timer so the rice is ready first thing in the morning. My Zojirushi can cook a variety of rice techniques, like gaba brown which takes 3.5 hours. And after it is cooked, it will keep the rice warm for days, which is great for meal planning.

That seems like a recipe for food bourn illness - does it keep it hot enough to keep the rice outside the "danger zone"?

It should boil while cooking (I've never monitored exact rice cooker temps, but... boiling), which would sterilize the inside of the pot.

For the primary worry of bacillus cereus, it looks like there are some interesting heat susceptibility chances introduced even to spores after initial heat treatment. See: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC239763/

Instant Pot keep warm is at least ~40°C (?), usually a good bit higher, which should be in the 45°C+ range to kill weakened spores.

So, maybe op isn't flirting with much danger?

If anything, I don’t do that because it makes your rice dry and not delicious.

And if you put in the correct rice to water ratio, it will be perfect.

    inner_pot_weight = input("How much does your inner pot weigh: ")
    RiceWeight = input("How much does your rice weigh in grams: ")

    water_amount = (int(RiceWeight) \* .19) + int(RiceWeight)
    total_pot_weight = int(inner_pot_weight) + int(RiceWeight) + int(water_amount)

    print(f'You will need to add {water_amount:.0f} grams of water, and your total pot weight will be {total_pot_weight} grams.')
    print("Set your pressure cooker to white rice, and do a natural release after 10 minutes.")

Add water until it is one finger segment (the first bend point on your index finger) above the rice. No other weights or measures necessary.

100% with you. I’m no pro, but my stainless pot rice is basically perfect. Only thing I’m not great at is seasoning it like sushi places do.

What works for me in the instant pot: 1 cup rice to 1.25 cups water, set it to pressure cook 4 min, then wait 10 min, then release pressure. I get consistently decent rice this way, it’s not the parameters the manual recommends. If I follow the manual I get overcooked mushy porridge instead of rice.

One generally applicable reason is that you can make a few cups and it will be fine in the rice cooker for days. Pretty convenient.

A more personal reason is that I don't want to cook anything an instapot can cook except rice, so it doesn't add any value compared to a rice cooker.

If you make rice everyday, you won’t be able to convince your Chinese wife to ho with a stove top method. Besides, even a pressure pot would take up some counter space, so you aren’t losing much.