The Best of the Best Rice Cooker Cookbook: 100 No-Fail Recipes for All Kinds of Things That Can Be Made from Start to Finish in Your Rice Cooker

The Best of the Best Rice Cooker Cookbook: 100 No-Fail Recipes for All Kinds of Things That Can Be Made from Start to Finish in Your Rice Cooker

This beautiful book will have you falling in love with your rice cooker as you use it every day for perfect-every-time rice and an incredibly surprising range of other foods. Rice cookers are ideal for the way we cook today. They are versatile and convenient , with one-button operation and a conveniently small footprint on your kitchen counter—plus, they can be cleaned in a flash when you are done cooking. Rice cookers make foolproof rice and beans, of course; but, as Beth Hensperger shows in this collection of the 100 best recipes from her earlier Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook , they cook a whole lot more than you might have thought. Here are all sorts of grains beyond rice, including quinoa , millet , and couscous , as well as all the popular pulses and legumes . In these pages, you will also find custards , hot cereals , and puddings , which, it turns out, cook up like a dream in the rice cooker. For substantial meals, there are a host of tasty and easy-to-make risottos , pilafs , chilis , stews , and soups , some with meats and some vegetarian. Unlike the earlier book, this new book has beautiful color photos to inspire you, as you make a heartwarming Sweet Brown Rice with Curry, Carrots, and Raisins; a zippy Fiery Pineapple Rice with Cashews and Cilantro; or a comforting Millet, Squash, and Sweet Pea Pilaf. Never has such a humble and simple-to-use kitchen appliance seemed so powerful and full of promise. Beth Hensperger  is the author of 22 cookbooks, about half books on bread and baking and half books on how to cook with popular countertop appliances. They include The Bread Bible , winner of a James Beard Cookbook Award, and several volumes in the best-selling Not Your Mother’s series, including  Not Your Mother’s Slow Cooker Recipes for Two, Not Your Mother’s Microwave Cookbook,  and   the blockbuster first volume, Not Your Mother’s Slow Cooker Cookbook . She has twice been nominated for the Julia Child/IACP Cookbook Award. Hensperger previously wrote a San Jose Mercury News food column for twelve years, Baking with the Seasons, and has contributed to dozens of cooking and lifestyle magazines, such as Food & Wine , Every Day with Rachael Ray , Veggie Life , Cooking Light , Working Woman , Victoria , Prevention , and Family Circle. The Best of the Best Rice Cooker Cookbook 100 No-Fail Recipes for All Kinds of Things That Can Be Made from Start to Finish in Your Rice Cooker By Beth Hensperger, Julie Kaufmann The Quarto Group Copyright © 2012 Beth Hensperger and Julie Kaufmann All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-55832-963-8 Contents It All Started with a Grain of Rice, 7, The Rice Cooker Machine, 9, RICE MADE PERFECTLY, 22, SIMPLE RICES AND SMALL MEALS, 57, PILAFS, 72, RISOTTOS, 86, SUSHI, 93, WHOLE-GRAIN COOKING, 106, POLENTA, GRITS, AND HOMINY, 119, HOT CEREALS, 126, BEANS, LEGUMES, AND VEGETABLES, 136, WHOLE-MEAL STEAMING, 150, PUDDINGS, CUSTARDS, AND FRUIT DESSERTS, 159, Index, 172, CHAPTER 1 RICE MADE PERFECTLY American Long-Grain White Rice — 1 Chinese-Style Plain Rice — 2 Converted Rice — 3 American Jasmine Rice — 4 Thai Jasmine Rice — 5 Medium-Grain White Rice — 6 Japanese White Rice with Umeboshi and Sesame — 7 Riso — 8 Short-Grain White Rice — 9 Steamed Sticky Rice — 10 Long- or Medium-Grain Brown Rice — 11 Short-Grain Brown Rice — 12 Germinated Brown Rice — 13 Brown Basmati Rice — 14 Wehani Rice — 15 Black Rice — 16 Buddha is said to have existed on one grain of cooked rice per day while on his early ascetic path. His mendicant disciples are given the credit for the spread of the rice culture, along with its cooking pots, making rice basic fare throughout Southeast Asia and China. For the Buddhists, this set the atmosphere to imbue the grain with the power for supernatural nourishment (thus making rice the food of alms throughout Asia) as well as a simply wholesome foodstuff (the first food an Indian bride serves her new husband). Japanese Zen Buddhists have lent the name "little Buddha" to each grain in their rice bowls; children love the association. The gentleman-scholar Confucius, a contemporary of Buddha, was known as the apostle of virtuous living and a gourmet. He is said to have established the philosophical basis for today's Chinese cuisine: food that combines the attributes of fine sensory aesthetics with inner harmony. His meticulously prepared daily rice bowl, always perfectly white, would be the background for the jewel-like colors of contrasting or similarly hued complementary foods, served in a bowl that was also a work of notable artistry. This is the ancestry of the rice, cooked in basically the same manner, that graces our tables today. Rice, the most popular grain in the world, comes in a wide variety of textures, colors, sizes, and tastes. It is grown in every temperate and tropical zone on this earth. The explosion of interest in traditional ethnic cuisines, from Asian to Mi