By Jae-Ha Kim
jaehakim.com
November 30, 2016
When my siblings and I went away to college, my parents sent us off with small rice cookers. Back then, we didn’t have microwaves for our dorm rooms and access to stoves was limited to kids who were living in apartments.
That rice cooker was a lifesaver for late night snacking and a source of cheap and easy-to-make comfort food. (I always had a jar of my mother’s homemade kimchi in my mini fridge!)
I still have that rice cooker. But after I got married, my mother gave us this Tiger rice cooker to set up in our new home.
When I first tried it out, I had a love/hate relationship with it. It made delicious rice quickly (within 15 minutes or so). But all too often, it would spew starchy water from the top, creating a mess that I got sick of cleaning up.
Then I started adding less water than I was used to. And guess what? It worked out perfectly!
Once, I tried unsuccessfully to make 죽 (Korean rice porridge) in it. I had never tried in a rice cooker before and hadn’t bothered to read the directions. All I did was put in twice the amount of water than I would’ve for making regular rice.
Wrong!
But the rice maker adjusted for all the excess water, discarding it (through the top spout). The result was a pot of perfectly steamed rice.
When I serve rice as part of the meal when we have guests over, my friends always say it’s so good. And they ask about the rice to water ratio. Though you can use the markings on the rice cooker to help you with that, I find it better to use the method I learned from my mom: After I rinse off the rice, I put my hand (palm down) on top and fill it with water until it hits the top of my knuckles.
You can make as little as one cup to the capacity of 5.5 cups of rice. I almost always make the maximum and store the leftovers in the fridge. Cold rice is the best kind to use when you’re making kimchi fried rice!
Because this was a gift, I don’t know exactly how much my mother paid for it. It was probably about $200 back then. But after 10 years, it’s still going strong. Read more about my other rice cookers here.
CHECK THIS OUT: usa.tiger-corporation.com
©JAE-HA KIM |All Rights Reserved
This looks delicious!! Your kimbap is all-pro! ??? Thank you so much for the kind words. We’re honored!
와 김밥이네용. ???
My doctor made me cut carbs to help me lose weight and I started having dreams about eating handfuls of rice straight out of the rice cooker ??? I love rice!!
“I don’t always need a rice cooker. But when I do… ” 😀
It’s amazing to me how long rice cookers last… they are virtually indestructible… our oldest one is 21.