Rice

Because we eat a lot of curry in our house, we prepare a lot of rice. This is mostly for Game Fanatic and me though. Lego Lover will eat rice when certain fancy curries are made and the Scientist will occasionally eat rice but he’s not very keen on it. Anyway, years ago we bought a combination rice cooker, slow cooker and steamer. It was mostly used for cooking rice but then the pan started losing its finish and rice kept sticking to it. It was really too small to do very much of the slow cooking. At the time, it was mostly Game Fanatic cooking rice and it was often small amounts so we got a cheap small rice cooker. Size-wise it was just fine but it never cleaned up very easily.

After a couple or more years of the rice pan being left to “soak” for way too long, I started looking at getting a new rice cooker. I’d have loved to get one of the better rice cookers which are mostly made in Japan and Korea but the price is really way too much for our budget. I kept looking for reviews of rice cookers sold here but most of what I saw kept referring back to the Japanese brands. When Lego Lover eats rice, we need a lot more than the small rice cooker makes so I started looking seriously at the local brands. After reading and reviewing I finally chose  Breville one which wasn’t cheap but not too expensive.  I really love the new rice cooker and rice doesn’t stick to the pan at all. I don’t use anything but a sponge to clean it out and for the most part it cooks rice really well.

One of the other reasons for getting a new rice cooker was I could cook sushi rice more appropriately. I had had mixed results doing in the microwave or the old rice cooker. So long as I get the water amount correct, it has come out quite well each time. This leads me to a couple of my new favorite meals to make.

I started buying a Mabo tofu curry mix at some nearby markets. The first time I did this, I had cut up some vegetables and eaten it plain. It was a bit overpowering that way and too hot for me. (It was the extra hot mix, but usually this isn’t really all that hot.) Anyway, I have been making this with rice and it comes out a very nice meal and the tofu tastes lovely. One day I will try to make this from scratch but it’s a fairly easy quick meal for me to eat on my own  since nobody else is interested in having it.

The other dish I have started cooking frequently is kimchi fried rice. I have had an understanding since my teenage years that kimchi was super spicy hot and was stinky. My uncle had brought some from Korea years ago when he was in the navy and it look and smell pretty awful. It wasn’t until I started watching Korean dramas earlier this year that I realised that there are all sorts of kimichi and it’s not necessarily all that hot. Plus, I started seeing it being sold locally at the markets and was curious. I finally bought some a few months ago and tried it and it was okay although not so much as a stand-alone thing. By this point I was aware of its use more as a side dish. I kept hearing about kimchi fried rice so I looked up recipes and finally tried this one a couple of months ago. The worst part of making this is chopping up the kimchi into smaller pieces so it cooks more evenly. The first time I made it, I added too my pepper paste and the dried seaweed was a bit overpowering at first. The subsequent attempts have mostly been better. With the new rice cooker, the texture of the rice is about perfect and it tastes lovely. I don’t add exactly the same veggies as the recipe but find it taste really nice with chopped green and red peppers, large oyster mushrooms, leeks and spring onion. I also often add ground beef or pork for a better protein hit. I’m going to try it was a firm tofu and maybe Qorn some time in the future since that’s a lot cheaper and since it’s mostly me who eats it.