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Comment by narag | Hacker News Reader

I've had no luck with that devices, moreover the instructions advised against broth, just water. But found out that with the right proportion of liquid and rice, a regular pot, six minutes on the vitro and ten minutes after switching out the power, gives perfect paella. So simple that I wonder how people spends money on widgets or are watching the whole process to add water.

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I learned how to cook rice properly in India, just pot, water, some salt in right quantities and timing. Did that for decade at least.

I still use rice cooker though these days, even more trivial to operate, can't mess up things if I miss the final part, and it will keep it warm for hours. Extremely practical. Its also baby trivial, at least the device we have (which is not pure rice cooker rather some multi stuff with rice as one of many options, but we basically just do rice and yogurt).

Also, paella may be a fine food (if eaten in Spain or affiliated countries), but that type of rice has nothing to do with usual type of rice used as side dish. I actually don't know how to cook that type of rice well.

The same method works for any type of "dry" rice cooking. With "dry" I mean that all the liquid ends in the rice, no soup. The main advantage over cookers is that you can use chicken or seafood broth and add any other ingredient before the rice. You can still use it for white rice, just rice and salt.

My favourite recipe is to sauté chopped onions and peppers, a little garlic and black pepper, add shrimp, cuttlefish and clams, and then top up the water to the required amount and add the rice when it boils. Six minutes with the vitro on and, in ten more, it is delicious.

Change the seafood for mushrooms, chicken or whatever you like.

I learned how to cook rice properly from my Mom. Pot, 2x water, boil then turn to low, add rice, 18 minutes, done. My only gripe is that I'm still trying to find a good rice pot with the little steam vent in the lid.

The rice cookers I've seen take twice as long to make rice that is by no means twice as good.

To each, their own. My Mom loves the rice cooker I gave back to her because it took too long to cook rice. =)

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