How to properly cook rice in a rice cooker

Tips for using a Rice Cooker

Written by Allison Whitehead

Rice is one of the few foods that doesnâ€™t cook faster in the microwaveâ€¦ but itâ€™s still well worth buying a microwaveable rice cooker, as it virtually guarantees perfect fluffy rice every time.

Try these handy tips to improve your cooked rice dishesâ€¦

Make sure that when you put the rice in the basket, you only just cover the top of it with water. This will ensure the rice absorbs the liquid without sitting in excess water and thus losing some of its flavor.

Cook the rice on full power for ten minutes and then stir it and check the water level before finishing the cooking time. The water should be topped up if necessary so itâ€™s just touching the top of the rice.

Donâ€™t just stick to white rice; try mixing in some wild rice as well, or doing a mix of white and brown rice. Incidentally, this is an excellent way to get young children to eat brown rice.

You can flavour the rice while itâ€™s cooking by crumbling a vegetable or meat stock cube into the water. Try different ones to accompany different dishes.

For a quick and easy vegetable rice, simply mix some frozen peas and sweetcorn in with the rice before you cook it. You could also add frozen mushrooms and chopped onion.

Once the rice is cooked and cold, you can add chopped ham, tinned tuna, cubed corned beef, etc., to make a cold rice dish that is excellent for packed lunches.

Rice makes an excellent alternative to sandwiches for a packed lunch, and using a microwaveable rice cooker means you can easily cook a batch of flavoured or vegetable rice in no time.

Try a few different ways of flavouring the water while the rice is cooking until you find something you really like â€“ try soy sauce for an oriental taste, salt and pepper and mixed herbs, or combine a couple of different stock cubes (for instance, a vegetable stock cube added to a beef one makes the flavour more mellow).

Why not give it a go? Your lunch tomorrow could be altogether more interesting than just having an egg sandwich!