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Posts like this take the unfortunate (and very American) view of food as fuel, an absolute necessity that you have to get out of the way as cheaply and efficien

Posts like this take the unfortunate (and very American) view of food as fuel, an absolute necessity that you have to get out of the way as cheaply and efficiently as possible. Good food, in that view, is anything where the taste isn't painful. As a foodie, this pains me to see. You cannot cook anything good in a rice maker anymore than you can a microwave except, of course, rice. You cannot cook anything good with a bouillon cube (at bare minimum, buy some decent frozen stock from your local soup store) regardless of technique. Good food to me is worth the time it takes to make. On the other hand, I can understand why people choose to optimize other parts of their life in this way. I constantly remind myself that not everyone wants to spend their Sunday making a quiche and an heirloom bean soup to eat for breakfast and lunch all week. Not everyone wants to roast a chicken every week, save the carcasses, then make a stock once a month. That's fine. But I think everyone should experience it before settling for a life of rice-cooker meals.

pavel_lishin 14y ago
You would cringe if you saw what I just ate. Made some spaghetti last night, with sauteed onions and mushrooms, with olive oil as sauce. Heated it up today in the microwave, but not long enough, so I just ate it cold, shoveling it into my mouth while reading. Sometimes I like taking the time to make good food. But most of the time, food is just calories and nutrients. (I've also had friends tell me that I should become more of a connoisseur of food, or coffee, or wine - but then, I'd never be able to enjoy the food/coffee/wine that I do now because it would taste like crap by comparison.)
- polyfractal 14y ago
  I had leftover Easy Mac that was made with Eggnog instead of milk because I had ran out. It was sinfully delicious. Probably took a year off my life though.
  - saraid216 14y ago
    > Probably took a year off my life though. According to XKCD, all you have to do is pick up 2,629,742 pennies (individually) and you'll have your year back! http://what-if.xkcd.com/22/ http://what-if.xkcd.com/22/ Science!
- jules 14y ago
  Nicer food doesn't need to be a lot of work. For example: cook spaghetti, remove water, add in crushed garlic (raw!), some olive oil, pepper & salt and eat with cheese. Of course this isn't a great dish, but tastes much better than what you made for less work. If you have two minutes more time we can extend this recipe: put all the ingredients plus grilled pine nuts and a whole bunch of basil leaves into a blender (except the spaghetti and the cheese of course), and you have a very nice pesto. Normal things usually don't take more than 20 minutes of attention. Stews are excellent: you just throw everything in and let the stove do the work and you have food for multiple days. Going further you have foods that you probably wouldn't cook for yourself but you can cook when you have people over for dinner. Stuff like tiramisu or chocolate mousse don't take more than 20 minutes to prepare. Making your own mayonnaise takes 2 minutes, and you can make it a bit different for example by replacing the vinegar with lime juice (excellent with fish). Then there are things that do take a bit more time (sushi, ravioli and pizza for example), but even this doesn't take more than 30-40 minutes (of course there exists things that take a long time to cook, but that's not necessary for serving a tasty meal).
  - mattmaroon 14y ago
    Then you get into classical French cooking... :)
  - derleth 14y ago
    > add in crushed garlic (raw!) Assuming you have access to this, which foodies implicitly assume you do.
    - jules 14y ago
      Can't you buy this for 2 cents per clove of garlic at the supermarket?
      - derleth 14y ago
        > Can't you buy this for 2 cents per clove of garlic at the supermarket? Look up 'food deserts' sometime: http://www.cdc.gov/features/fooddeserts/ http://www.cdc.gov/features/fooddeserts/ http://www.fooddesert.net/ http://www.fooddesert.net/
pmichaud 14y ago
This is interesting because I've seen the opposite trend. You seem to view food as a kind of art (and more power to you), but many people hold the very American view that food is magic. It's medicine for sadness, it's a symbol of manliness, it's a aesthetic necessity--it's anything BUT fuel for your body. Americans are very overweight, and the reason is that they somehow do NOT view food as fuel. If they did see it this way, they would use the right fuel to power the body correctly, and enough but not too much. That's unfortunately not the case. What I can believe though is that many people who view food as an emotional companion don't have the refined taste that you have, and so they end up eating too much bad food that's also bad for them.
- enoch_r 14y ago
  I definitely see this the other way around. It's like music or art--people who don't care about an aesthetic pursuit are going to be the ones who never develop a "refined taste." And the pop music of food consists of sugar, refined carbs, and fat. Big, bold flavors. Just as people rarely appreciate subtle, nuanced musical pieces if they aren't "into" music, people who aren't "into" food end up only really enjoying the obvious flavors that happen to be terrible for them.
- derleth 14y ago
  > Americans are very overweight Stereotypically, sure. > and the reason is that they somehow do NOT view food as fuel. Or they've been fed a lot of lies about how some foods are 'good' and some are 'bad' without regard for context, or the simple fact that caloric intake is vital in weight control.
  - jtheory 14y ago
    > Stereotypically, sure. Statistically? More than 75% of the adult population in the US is overweight, and over 30% are obese. I'm staying out of the "why" question, regardless.
    - derleth 14y ago
      > I'm staying out of the "why" question Which is the only one worth talking about.
pohl 14y ago
from your local soup store Where does one need to live to find soup stores? I've never seen one in a half century of living.
- mattmaroon 14y ago
  I know of a couple in San Francisco. One in Cleveland. See them in almost any city. Remember the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld?
  - pohl 14y ago
    That explains it. You probably have no idea how fortunate you are.
    - mattmaroon 14y ago
      I'll be the first to admit to being fortunate, but I don't think that makes me a rarity here.
      - pohl 14y ago
        Fair enough. For some reason Wierd Al's old movie UHF comes to mind, where he has a fake ad for a store that specializes in just spatulas. I bet San Fran and New York have one of these, too. ;-) http://youtube.com/watch?v=2XbCWmY0eqY http://youtube.com/watch?v=2XbCWmY0eqY
        mikeash 14y ago
        Meanwhile, the rest of us have to buy spatulas from non-specialty stores like an idiot. Maybe it's time for someone to bring Spatula City into the internet age.
        pohl 14y ago
        You cannot cook anything decent that way. At bare minimum, buy a decent spatula from your local spatula store.
polyfractal 14y ago
Besides, I'd rather "cook" in a crockpot than a rice cooker. More versatile, same style of "dump everything in" recipe. You can also make a mean bbq pulled pork with just a crockpot and a hunk of meat. I think everyone should save chicken bones for stock. They keep in the freezer forever, so even if you don't roast chicken often there's really no excuse not to save it. Homemade stock is so much better than the stuff in cans.
- oftenwrong 14y ago
  rice cooker: versatile crockpot/slow cooker: more versatile combination rice cooker and slow cooker: most versatile http://us.sanyo.com/Microcomputerized-Rice-Cookers/10-Cup-Micom-Rice-Slow-Cooker http://us.sanyo.com/Microcomputerized-Rice-Cookers/10-Cup-Mi...
- mattmaroon 14y ago
  Cheaper too.
  - jules 14y ago
    I'm not sure if that's true, the vegetables and meat do cost something. If you do plan on making stock regularly, I've recently found that a pressure cooker is a great investment. The result actually tastes better after far less time. But I would say if you're just cooking something quick and cheap for yourself, there's nothing wrong with bouillon cubes. In a sauce it's better than just salt which is probably going to be the alternative.
    - mattmaroon 14y ago
      It's true. I spend less on vegetables to make a gallon of stock than I do to buy one quart at a grocery store, and mine is better. Even when I'm doing a beef stock and have to buy the bones it's still a little cheaper, though in that case not much. But the difference in quality between homemade beef stock and store bought is far larger than the same difference in chicken stock.
- ssharp 14y ago
ChuckMcM 14y ago
Heh, a bit over the top wouldn't you say? Do you consider the car you drive "your statement of worth" or the designers who designed your clothes "the most important voices of style this century" ? Accept that you are a foodie, great. Accept that there are non-foodies too. We had a discussion here a while back about "living" on a couple hundred dollars a month for food in the Bay Area. That is a very real sort of challenge if you're bootstrapping a company. And if you can "cook" your meals with maybe 15 minutes of chopping some ingredients and throwing them into a cooker and then going away for an hour, that is a good use of your time [1]. And its a lot better for you than Raman. So sure, you're not going to win an Iron Chef competition with a rice cooker but its a much better way of keeping yourself fed on a budget than eating pre-prepared food. [1] One of the huge benefits of rice cookers over other cooking methods is they automatically switch off and go into 'warm' mode, this allows a distracted person to come back in 1 - 4 hrs after starting the 'meal' and eat it nice and hot. If you're coding this is priceless.
- mattmaroon 14y ago
  "Accept that you are a foodie, great. Accept that there are non-foodies too." I'm pretty sure that's exactly what I said in the penultimate paragraph. I just want people to try real food, both eating and cooking. Then if you want to go back to rice cookers at least you'll know what the alternative was.
  - ChuckMcM 14y ago
    I know, its your sentence construction. Consider this sentence: "I just want people to try real food, both eating and cooking." When you say it like that, "real food," you imply that food made in a rice cooker is some how not "real". Which it clearly is for the dictionary definition of the word real, so it reads like you've got this whole value judgement thing going on about the definition of "real." You're not showing acceptance, your trying to educate the people so that they can see the correctness of your world view. If you accept non-foodie folks, those who eat to live rather than live to eat, then you phrase this thusly; "Cooking food in a rice cooker is very convenient and as the article states it can keep you fed with nutritious food while minimizing cost and effort, However, when you choose to cook food this way you miss out on opportunities for an even richer food experience which do not require a lot more effort." -- followed by exposition on things your missing out on and how one can achieve them economically. You see, acceptance in the first part, new information to share in the second. Same message, different connotation. Be nice.
TillE 14y ago
> You cannot cook anything good in a rice maker anymore than you can a microwave except, of course, rice. This is silly in the extreme. A rice cooker is just a pot with a built-in heating element and a sensor to tell when the water has boiled off. Most dishes you can make in one pot, you can make equally well in a rice cooker. (The exception being when you need to carefully control the heat.) Do you really think it's impossible to make a good one-pot meal?
- mattmaroon 14y ago
  That's a large enough exception that one pot cooking and rice cooker cooking are two very different things. You can make some good meals in one pot, but you're doing things like browning meat in it, then sweating onions, then adding in whatever else. I make a mean poulet basquaise in a dutch oven, but couldn't make it in a rice cooker. Can you somehow get a maillard reaction to occur in a rice cooker? Or caramelization?
  - jules 14y ago
    You can in some limited cases. E.g. you can make dulce de leche au bain marie. You probably won't have much success searing your meat au bain marie though ;-)
    - mattmaroon 14y ago
      But a bain marie is sorta two pots though :)
  - tptacek 14y ago
    You can definitely get browning in a rice cooker, but it usually means you've done something wrong. This is very definitely a downside of Ebert's rice-cooker meals.
  - mamoswined 14y ago
    "Can you somehow get a maillard reaction to occur in a rice cooker? Or caramelization?" You can use ingredients that already have these. Like I use onions I caramelized before hand and top a lot of my dishes with meat that I browned. You can get some browning in a rice cooker if you need to though. Actually some rice cookers are made specially to do that. The ones that target the Middle Eastern market produce rice with something called a "tadig" which means that the bottom rice has turned crispy and brown- ideally with ghee put in the bottom of the pot before the rice was added. My rice cooker produces that and I typically take it out, break it up, and mix it in with the dish so there are lovely crunchy bits.
rhizome 14y ago
As a foodie, this pains me to see. Let's see your music collection. As a music snob, I believe you should have to account for my interpretation of your taste.
DigitalJack 14y ago
"You cannot cook anything good in a rice maker anymore than you can a microwave except, of course, rice." Apparently you are unfamiliar with Sous-Vide cooking style. I've only recently discovered it, and I have been making the best chicken I've ever tasted. Sous-Vide (roughly french for under-vacuum), is a technique whereby you vacuum seal the food you wish to cook in a bag (usually proteins, but veggies will work too). You then cook this sealed food in water at the precise temperature you wish the center to be. In other words, I want my chicken to be 148F through out, so I get the water temperature steady at 148F (with chicken in place). You have to cook it for a longer time to be sure it is safe to eat, but man is it worth it. There are charts out there that show the time-vs-temperature relation for safe cooking. After you have cooked it long enough, you can leave it in the water until guests arrive. Then do the final prep. For me this means heating a pan to about 400F with oil and seasoning and then quickly searing the chicken. Or sometimes I'll shred the chicken for a caserole. It's marvelous. I do this on a gas stove top, which requires practice to keep the temperature level, but you can buy a machine to do it for you. High end restaurants use these to perfectly cook a steak, and then do a final sear. Sous-Vide Supreme is one brand I know. However if you wish to do it yourself, all you need is a simple rice cooker with an on off switch and a PID temperature controller. You can buy a PID controller, or make one yourself with arduino. It's really a fantastic way to cook. Best food ever. From a rice cooker.
- mattmaroon 14y ago
  I am familiar with sous-vide, but it is very much not a rice cooker. That's like saying assembly is the same as Python. A good poly-science costs what, $700? I did see a cool-looking immersion circulator on Kickstarter for I think under $200 a few months back, I should try to find it again. And you still need to rip and char at the end for maillard reactions! But yeah, they're bad ass. Easiest way to poach an egg too.
  - ghaff 14y ago
    Hook a $100-ish PID controller up to the rice cooker. (Personally I hook it up to a crockpot but, more or less, same difference--some say a big rice cooker is actually better for this than a crock pot.) You do of course, need, a vacuum sealer as well although you can experiment with ziplocks that you've squeezed the air out of. I'm actually not really a sous vide religious convert. But I did put together a setup and, for certain types of food, it's actually really convenient.
derleth 14y ago
> You cannot cook anything good in a rice maker anymore than you can a microwave My personal experience disproves this, but, I suppose, my personal experience is now wrong because it contradicts your tastes.
- dingfeng_quek 14y ago
  I'm pretty sure that for anything you can cook with a rice maker, I can cook something else, to an equivalent quality/pleasantness/enjoyment-when-consumed, in a microwave. And vice versa. * I assume you are not a professional food scientist or chef, which will make it hard for me to compete with you.
  - derleth 14y ago
    > I'm pretty sure that for anything you can cook with a rice maker, I can cook something else, to an equivalent quality/pleasantness/enjoyment-when-consumed, in a microwave. Except this isn't what was asserted. The assertion was that neither rice cookers nor microwaves can make good food except for rice.
bane 14y ago
Probably some of the best food I've ever eaten came from "tossing a bunch of stuff in a pot and letting it simmer for a while". You say you're a foodie, but if you don't like stews you're probably doing it wrong.
- tptacek 14y ago
  This comment doesn't make any sense. He didn't say he doesn't like braises, not liking braises doesn't make you "not a foodie", it's ridiculous to question whether someone "is" or "isn't" a foodie when they say they are, and the rice cooker only admits to a couple simple variants on braise applications. If you're making stews without browning your meat first, which you can't do in a rice cooker, you're doing it wrong. In addition to not making any logical sense, pointlessly sniping at Matt doesn't add anything to the conversation. It would have been easy to disagree with him without doing that.
  - bane 14y ago
    He didn't say he doesn't like braises, not liking braises doesn't make you "not a foodie", it's ridiculous to question whether someone "is" or "isn't" a foodie when they say they are, and the rice cooker only admits to a couple simple variants on braise applications. If you're making stews without browning your meat first, which you can't do in a rice cooker, you're doing it wrong. I say this now with as much politeness as I can muster, when it comes to stews, you simply have no idea what you're talking about. And I say this as somebody who's mixed cultural household comes from two very old, very strong stew making cultures with a combined stew making experience in our cultural memory going back somewhere between 5-8 thousand years. (And I was just about to reply to you with some kind words about your passion for your fancy computer controlled crockpot)
    - tptacek 14y ago
      Link to the best stew recipe you can find for a protein that is normally browned that doesn't have, as its first step, browning the protein in a hot pan. Obviously, the first Cooks Illustrated recipe you find will say "the key to a good stew is proper browning of the meat", but then, as someone from a mixed cultural household with a background in stew-making, I'm sure you'd jaundiced about America's Test Kitchen; presumably, you'll scoff at Julia Child too (dry the meat, brown well). When I get home, I'll see what CIA's New Pro Chef says as well and cite it here. I'm guessing: they brown the meat first. Unfortunately, this is a topic that I do think I know something about.
tptacek 14y ago
The rice cooker meals are a gateway to more serious cooking. If we're honest with ourselves, the alternative for most nerds isn't "better cooking"; it's In N Out Burger. Always happy to see you commenting here, but a suggestion in this case would be to come up with the list of next steps forward for people embarking on cooking rice-cooker style. I already gave one (switch to a better protein than chicken breasts), but there's got to be many more.
- mattmaroon 14y ago
  Hmm. I don't really know. I tend to be a pretty all or nothing person (shocker right?) so the day I decided I wanted to learn to cook, I bought books like The French Laundry cookbook and the Culinary Institute of America's textbook. I'd tell someone who really wants to learn to cook to use rice makers for making rice. If someone was really interested in learning to cook, I'd tell them to get Ruhlman's 20 and Ad Hoc at Home. Both are relatively approachable and explain technique rather than just list off ingredients and instructions. Then work your way up the Thomas Keller chain (Bouchon, then TFL) because not only is he on everyone's short list for best chef in the world, but he puts a huge amount of effort into the books, even down to the typography, which a lot of other great chefs don't. (John Besh's book is great too btw.) He really goes out of his way to explain why he does the things he does.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    Ruhlman's Twenty is a great first cooking book. Heartily seconded. I'd get "Ratio", and the Kindle version of "The Flavor Bible", to accompany it. That'll set you up for a lifetime of cooking without ever looking up a recipe again. (Keller's books are all Ruhlman's writing, right?)
    - mattmaroon 14y ago
      I think he helped on TFL and Bouchon, yeah. Bouchon is a great book too.
    - eru 14y ago
      Thanks. I already know "Ratio" as a good introductionary text. I shall get the others as well.
KaoruAoiShiho 14y ago
Can you explain in an objective way, talking about taste or whatever terms foodies use why rice-cookers cannot cook good food? I'm inclined to think that this is subjective and just one man's opinion, but artistic types have been defending their subjective opinions in objective terms for a long time. For example designers talk about hierarchy, organization, affordances, even though design is artistic. I'm curious to hear if you have something to say along these lines.
- mattmaroon 14y ago
  I'll give it a whack. First off, I'm defining "good food" rather strictly. Something you'd see in a chef-owned restaurant, where the chef either went to culinary school or worked in prestigious restaurants. (Cooking, like programming, can be learned without school.) I'm not saying they have to have a Michelin star, but they have to be making a real effort to make good food, so not Olive Garden. Most of the people who disagree with me simply don't like my definition of good food (and perhaps find it snobbish) which is totally fine. So imagine you took a list of everything on those menus, and started filtering out anything using a technique a rice cooker is incapable of. I suppose my statement might not be literally true, there might still be SOMETHING left on the list, but we'd be talking less than a percent. There are a number of things you just can't do (I think) in a rice cooker that you do at least one of in pretty much every dish you'd see at such a restaurant. You can't cook something at more than one temperature, for instance. You can't cook at any temperature above or below 100 celsius. You can't get a Maillard reaction (the browning of a steak or toast and it's associated flavors) or caramelization to happen. Right there you've knocked out almost everything cooked that you'll see on such a menu. You can't roast or sear or sautee anything. A rice cooker cooks only with conduction in a wet environment. (I'm assuming convection occurs too when there's still enough liquid in the pot.) It's too hot to simmer and too cold to braise. Even one pot dishes (and anything that isn't a one pot dish, which is the vast majority of the food I've described, is out by definition unless you have numerous rice cookers) usually take multiple steps. For instance toss the chicken in to brown, remove, sweat some onions, toss in some peppers, put in some plum tomatoes and white wine, raise the heat a little to deglaze and burn off the alcohol, lower the heat, add the chicken back in, braise. Etc. (Season the chicken with salt and a little piment d'esplette in the beginning and you've got poulet basquaise! You're welcome HN.) So what can you do in a rice cooker? Boil stuff, that's it. You rarely in any decent restaurant will be served something that has had nothing done to it but boiling, in fact, I can't think of anything and like I said, I'm a foodie. I travel around a lot and have been to a lot of restaurants.
ksherlock 14y ago
A lot of recipes/cooking styles were based on poverty. Meatballs? A few scraps of meat and stale bread. Those fancy french sauces? Needed to mask the rancid meat. Woks? For cooking with a minimum amount of fuel. And so on and so on. Would you say they couldn't cook anything good, either?
- mattmaroon 14y ago
  Not at all. A lot of my favorite foods are peasant foods especially French and Italian) none of which can be made in a rice cooker. They're often quite difficult to make, they just tend to use what are (or at least long ago were) the cheaper parts of the animal.
- dingfeng_quek 14y ago
  Because much of people's preference for certain types of food are acquired and not necessary (or even beneficial). During times of poverty, there are often pressures to change preferences, leading to a much higher rate of innovation. (Special case of general mechanism in creative destruction / evolution) Once a preference is established, it can stay for a long time because there's a physiological tendency to like food you've eaten (without ill effects) before. There are few social forces strong enough to override that.
sorbits 14y ago
> You cannot cook anything good in a rice maker […] except […] rice After spending time in Asia and getting a taste for glutinous rice [1], I now steam my rice in a bamboo steamer (which adds to the flavor): http://www.cookasianfood.com/asian-food/how-to-make-sticky-rice-bamboo-rice-steamer/ http://www.cookasianfood.com/asian-food/how-to-make-sticky-r... Highly recommended (both this type of rice and steaming your rice in bamboo)! [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glutinous_rice http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glutinous_rice
- mattmaroon 14y ago
  Buying that! I know far too little about Eastern cuisine.
jdechko 14y ago
I love to cook. I take pride in adding all the right spices, caramelizing onions properly (a 30+ minute task), marinating cuts of meat (before we became vegeterian), etc. But I also work, and have a family (wife isn't the best cook). So when I get home at 5pm, I have 2 small kids that want to jump me, and I immediately have to start on dinner. Honestly, it's all I can do some nights to not say "F--k it, we're ordering out." In my family, "good food" isn't an option most weeknights. So we either eat out (which is expensive and/or unhealthy) or we make simple crock-pot/ rice cooker recipes, which even my wife can do. It's not always black & white.
andrewcooke 14y ago
from outside, the american approach is going full-expert overboard about something that really is just part of everyday life. you see this with all kinds of things - americans can't simply go for a walk, they have to be wearing the right specialised shoes; they can't simply read a book they have to be using an e-reader with a special package that provides the latest volume from their bookclub; they can't simply cook a meal they have to be a foodie that obsesses over the latest source of truffles; they can't... obviously this is all caricature and cliche, but you yourself criticise others for being "very american" before acting out the same ritual.
jt2190 14y ago
Pick up a copy of Beth Hensperger's "The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook."[1] My wife and I made Thanksgiving Jook (Congee) with some homemade turkey broth and bits of meat from the carcass after Thanksgiving. I'm not sure how cooking it on the stovetop would have made it taste better. [1] http://www.harvardcommonpress.com/the-ultimate-rice-cooker-cookbook/ http://www.harvardcommonpress.com/the-ultimate-rice-cooker-c...
mamoswined 14y ago
I moonlight as a professional food writer. I have a $800 a month food budget. I've eaten at a quarter of the restaurants on the San Pellegrino List. I still use a rice cooker. Ebert unfortunately gives the wrong impression of the cuisine you can make with a rice cooker. He's a vegan and he can't eat, what do you expect? The reality is that rice cooker cuisine in Asian has come out of situations where people didn't have access to normal cooking appliances, but also could not start fires without burning down their dwellings. I learned about this in grad school where our dwellings were similar. It made me appreciate different types of rice, broths, the technique of steaming (a good rice cooker should come with an attached steamer)...what could be more foodie than that? I bet I can rival your cooking with just a rich cooker. I can make luscious steamed turbot with a parmesan asparagus risotto, steamed spicy Vietnamese sausage and silky coddled eggs over a lemon-grass infused rice, and hearty congee with miso and wild mushrooms. I use homemade stocks as bases for all of these. I make them in my crock pot, they don't take very long either. My rice cooker meals are better than the meals served at many restaurants. And to be honest, I use my own restaurant budget on meals that cost as much as $300 a person, which leaves not so much for day to day food. But damn if I'm going to eat crappy food. Rice cooker? Makes cheap, easy, and delicious meals if you have the skills. I would definitely not recommend Ebert's cooking advice or cookbook though.

pavel_lishin 14y ago

You would cringe if you saw what I just ate. Made some spaghetti last night, with sauteed onions and mushrooms, with olive oil as sauce. Heated it up today in the microwave, but not long enough, so I just ate it cold, shoveling it into my mouth while reading. Sometimes I like taking the time to make good food. But most of the time, food is just calories and nutrients. (I've also had friends tell me that I should become more of a connoisseur of food, or coffee, or wine - but then, I'd never be able to enjoy the food/coffee/wine that I do now because it would taste like crap by comparison.)

polyfractal 14y ago
I had leftover Easy Mac that was made with Eggnog instead of milk because I had ran out. It was sinfully delicious. Probably took a year off my life though.
- saraid216 14y ago
  > Probably took a year off my life though. According to XKCD, all you have to do is pick up 2,629,742 pennies (individually) and you'll have your year back! http://what-if.xkcd.com/22/ http://what-if.xkcd.com/22/ Science!
jules 14y ago
Nicer food doesn't need to be a lot of work. For example: cook spaghetti, remove water, add in crushed garlic (raw!), some olive oil, pepper & salt and eat with cheese. Of course this isn't a great dish, but tastes much better than what you made for less work. If you have two minutes more time we can extend this recipe: put all the ingredients plus grilled pine nuts and a whole bunch of basil leaves into a blender (except the spaghetti and the cheese of course), and you have a very nice pesto. Normal things usually don't take more than 20 minutes of attention. Stews are excellent: you just throw everything in and let the stove do the work and you have food for multiple days. Going further you have foods that you probably wouldn't cook for yourself but you can cook when you have people over for dinner. Stuff like tiramisu or chocolate mousse don't take more than 20 minutes to prepare. Making your own mayonnaise takes 2 minutes, and you can make it a bit different for example by replacing the vinegar with lime juice (excellent with fish). Then there are things that do take a bit more time (sushi, ravioli and pizza for example), but even this doesn't take more than 30-40 minutes (of course there exists things that take a long time to cook, but that's not necessary for serving a tasty meal).
- mattmaroon 14y ago
  Then you get into classical French cooking... :)
- derleth 14y ago
  > add in crushed garlic (raw!) Assuming you have access to this, which foodies implicitly assume you do.
  - jules 14y ago
    Can't you buy this for 2 cents per clove of garlic at the supermarket?
    - derleth 14y ago
      > Can't you buy this for 2 cents per clove of garlic at the supermarket? Look up 'food deserts' sometime: http://www.cdc.gov/features/fooddeserts/ http://www.cdc.gov/features/fooddeserts/ http://www.fooddesert.net/ http://www.fooddesert.net/

pmichaud 14y ago

This is interesting because I've seen the opposite trend. You seem to view food as a kind of art (and more power to you), but many people hold the very American view that food is magic. It's medicine for sadness, it's a symbol of manliness, it's a aesthetic necessity--it's anything BUT fuel for your body. Americans are very overweight, and the reason is that they somehow do NOT view food as fuel. If they did see it this way, they would use the right fuel to power the body correctly, and enough but not too much. That's unfortunately not the case. What I can believe though is that many people who view food as an emotional companion don't have the refined taste that you have, and so they end up eating too much bad food that's also bad for them.

enoch_r 14y ago
I definitely see this the other way around. It's like music or art--people who don't care about an aesthetic pursuit are going to be the ones who never develop a "refined taste." And the pop music of food consists of sugar, refined carbs, and fat. Big, bold flavors. Just as people rarely appreciate subtle, nuanced musical pieces if they aren't "into" music, people who aren't "into" food end up only really enjoying the obvious flavors that happen to be terrible for them.
derleth 14y ago
> Americans are very overweight Stereotypically, sure. > and the reason is that they somehow do NOT view food as fuel. Or they've been fed a lot of lies about how some foods are 'good' and some are 'bad' without regard for context, or the simple fact that caloric intake is vital in weight control.
- jtheory 14y ago
  > Stereotypically, sure. Statistically? More than 75% of the adult population in the US is overweight, and over 30% are obese. I'm staying out of the "why" question, regardless.
  - derleth 14y ago
    > I'm staying out of the "why" question Which is the only one worth talking about.

pohl 14y ago

from your local soup store Where does one need to live to find soup stores? I've never seen one in a half century of living.

mattmaroon 14y ago
I know of a couple in San Francisco. One in Cleveland. See them in almost any city. Remember the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld?
- pohl 14y ago
  That explains it. You probably have no idea how fortunate you are.
  - mattmaroon 14y ago
    I'll be the first to admit to being fortunate, but I don't think that makes me a rarity here.
    - pohl 14y ago
      Fair enough. For some reason Wierd Al's old movie UHF comes to mind, where he has a fake ad for a store that specializes in just spatulas. I bet San Fran and New York have one of these, too. ;-) http://youtube.com/watch?v=2XbCWmY0eqY http://youtube.com/watch?v=2XbCWmY0eqY
      - mikeash 14y ago
        Meanwhile, the rest of us have to buy spatulas from non-specialty stores like an idiot. Maybe it's time for someone to bring Spatula City into the internet age.
        pohl 14y ago
        You cannot cook anything decent that way. At bare minimum, buy a decent spatula from your local spatula store.

polyfractal 14y ago

Besides, I'd rather "cook" in a crockpot than a rice cooker. More versatile, same style of "dump everything in" recipe. You can also make a mean bbq pulled pork with just a crockpot and a hunk of meat. I think everyone should save chicken bones for stock. They keep in the freezer forever, so even if you don't roast chicken often there's really no excuse not to save it. Homemade stock is so much better than the stuff in cans.

oftenwrong 14y ago
rice cooker: versatile crockpot/slow cooker: more versatile combination rice cooker and slow cooker: most versatile http://us.sanyo.com/Microcomputerized-Rice-Cookers/10-Cup-Micom-Rice-Slow-Cooker http://us.sanyo.com/Microcomputerized-Rice-Cookers/10-Cup-Mi...
mattmaroon 14y ago
Cheaper too.
- jules 14y ago
  I'm not sure if that's true, the vegetables and meat do cost something. If you do plan on making stock regularly, I've recently found that a pressure cooker is a great investment. The result actually tastes better after far less time. But I would say if you're just cooking something quick and cheap for yourself, there's nothing wrong with bouillon cubes. In a sauce it's better than just salt which is probably going to be the alternative.
  - mattmaroon 14y ago
    It's true. I spend less on vegetables to make a gallon of stock than I do to buy one quart at a grocery store, and mine is better. Even when I'm doing a beef stock and have to buy the bones it's still a little cheaper, though in that case not much. But the difference in quality between homemade beef stock and store bought is far larger than the same difference in chicken stock.
ssharp 14y ago

ChuckMcM 14y ago

Heh, a bit over the top wouldn't you say? Do you consider the car you drive "your statement of worth" or the designers who designed your clothes "the most important voices of style this century" ? Accept that you are a foodie, great. Accept that there are non-foodies too. We had a discussion here a while back about "living" on a couple hundred dollars a month for food in the Bay Area. That is a very real sort of challenge if you're bootstrapping a company. And if you can "cook" your meals with maybe 15 minutes of chopping some ingredients and throwing them into a cooker and then going away for an hour, that is a good use of your time [1]. And its a lot better for you than Raman. So sure, you're not going to win an Iron Chef competition with a rice cooker but its a much better way of keeping yourself fed on a budget than eating pre-prepared food. [1] One of the huge benefits of rice cookers over other cooking methods is they automatically switch off and go into 'warm' mode, this allows a distracted person to come back in 1 - 4 hrs after starting the 'meal' and eat it nice and hot. If you're coding this is priceless.

mattmaroon 14y ago
"Accept that you are a foodie, great. Accept that there are non-foodies too." I'm pretty sure that's exactly what I said in the penultimate paragraph. I just want people to try real food, both eating and cooking. Then if you want to go back to rice cookers at least you'll know what the alternative was.
- ChuckMcM 14y ago
  I know, its your sentence construction. Consider this sentence: "I just want people to try real food, both eating and cooking." When you say it like that, "real food," you imply that food made in a rice cooker is some how not "real". Which it clearly is for the dictionary definition of the word real, so it reads like you've got this whole value judgement thing going on about the definition of "real." You're not showing acceptance, your trying to educate the people so that they can see the correctness of your world view. If you accept non-foodie folks, those who eat to live rather than live to eat, then you phrase this thusly; "Cooking food in a rice cooker is very convenient and as the article states it can keep you fed with nutritious food while minimizing cost and effort, However, when you choose to cook food this way you miss out on opportunities for an even richer food experience which do not require a lot more effort." -- followed by exposition on things your missing out on and how one can achieve them economically. You see, acceptance in the first part, new information to share in the second. Same message, different connotation. Be nice.

TillE 14y ago

> You cannot cook anything good in a rice maker anymore than you can a microwave except, of course, rice. This is silly in the extreme. A rice cooker is just a pot with a built-in heating element and a sensor to tell when the water has boiled off. Most dishes you can make in one pot, you can make equally well in a rice cooker. (The exception being when you need to carefully control the heat.) Do you really think it's impossible to make a good one-pot meal?

mattmaroon 14y ago
That's a large enough exception that one pot cooking and rice cooker cooking are two very different things. You can make some good meals in one pot, but you're doing things like browning meat in it, then sweating onions, then adding in whatever else. I make a mean poulet basquaise in a dutch oven, but couldn't make it in a rice cooker. Can you somehow get a maillard reaction to occur in a rice cooker? Or caramelization?
- jules 14y ago
  You can in some limited cases. E.g. you can make dulce de leche au bain marie. You probably won't have much success searing your meat au bain marie though ;-)
  - mattmaroon 14y ago
    But a bain marie is sorta two pots though :)
- tptacek 14y ago
  You can definitely get browning in a rice cooker, but it usually means you've done something wrong. This is very definitely a downside of Ebert's rice-cooker meals.
- mamoswined 14y ago
  "Can you somehow get a maillard reaction to occur in a rice cooker? Or caramelization?" You can use ingredients that already have these. Like I use onions I caramelized before hand and top a lot of my dishes with meat that I browned. You can get some browning in a rice cooker if you need to though. Actually some rice cookers are made specially to do that. The ones that target the Middle Eastern market produce rice with something called a "tadig" which means that the bottom rice has turned crispy and brown- ideally with ghee put in the bottom of the pot before the rice was added. My rice cooker produces that and I typically take it out, break it up, and mix it in with the dish so there are lovely crunchy bits.

rhizome 14y ago

As a foodie, this pains me to see. Let's see your music collection. As a music snob, I believe you should have to account for my interpretation of your taste.

DigitalJack 14y ago

"You cannot cook anything good in a rice maker anymore than you can a microwave except, of course, rice." Apparently you are unfamiliar with Sous-Vide cooking style. I've only recently discovered it, and I have been making the best chicken I've ever tasted. Sous-Vide (roughly french for under-vacuum), is a technique whereby you vacuum seal the food you wish to cook in a bag (usually proteins, but veggies will work too). You then cook this sealed food in water at the precise temperature you wish the center to be. In other words, I want my chicken to be 148F through out, so I get the water temperature steady at 148F (with chicken in place). You have to cook it for a longer time to be sure it is safe to eat, but man is it worth it. There are charts out there that show the time-vs-temperature relation for safe cooking. After you have cooked it long enough, you can leave it in the water until guests arrive. Then do the final prep. For me this means heating a pan to about 400F with oil and seasoning and then quickly searing the chicken. Or sometimes I'll shred the chicken for a caserole. It's marvelous. I do this on a gas stove top, which requires practice to keep the temperature level, but you can buy a machine to do it for you. High end restaurants use these to perfectly cook a steak, and then do a final sear. Sous-Vide Supreme is one brand I know. However if you wish to do it yourself, all you need is a simple rice cooker with an on off switch and a PID temperature controller. You can buy a PID controller, or make one yourself with arduino. It's really a fantastic way to cook. Best food ever. From a rice cooker.

mattmaroon 14y ago
I am familiar with sous-vide, but it is very much not a rice cooker. That's like saying assembly is the same as Python. A good poly-science costs what, $700? I did see a cool-looking immersion circulator on Kickstarter for I think under $200 a few months back, I should try to find it again. And you still need to rip and char at the end for maillard reactions! But yeah, they're bad ass. Easiest way to poach an egg too.
- ghaff 14y ago
  Hook a $100-ish PID controller up to the rice cooker. (Personally I hook it up to a crockpot but, more or less, same difference--some say a big rice cooker is actually better for this than a crock pot.) You do of course, need, a vacuum sealer as well although you can experiment with ziplocks that you've squeezed the air out of. I'm actually not really a sous vide religious convert. But I did put together a setup and, for certain types of food, it's actually really convenient.

derleth 14y ago

> You cannot cook anything good in a rice maker anymore than you can a microwave My personal experience disproves this, but, I suppose, my personal experience is now wrong because it contradicts your tastes.

dingfeng_quek 14y ago
I'm pretty sure that for anything you can cook with a rice maker, I can cook something else, to an equivalent quality/pleasantness/enjoyment-when-consumed, in a microwave. And vice versa. * I assume you are not a professional food scientist or chef, which will make it hard for me to compete with you.
- derleth 14y ago
  > I'm pretty sure that for anything you can cook with a rice maker, I can cook something else, to an equivalent quality/pleasantness/enjoyment-when-consumed, in a microwave. Except this isn't what was asserted. The assertion was that neither rice cookers nor microwaves can make good food except for rice.

bane 14y ago

Probably some of the best food I've ever eaten came from "tossing a bunch of stuff in a pot and letting it simmer for a while". You say you're a foodie, but if you don't like stews you're probably doing it wrong.

tptacek 14y ago
This comment doesn't make any sense. He didn't say he doesn't like braises, not liking braises doesn't make you "not a foodie", it's ridiculous to question whether someone "is" or "isn't" a foodie when they say they are, and the rice cooker only admits to a couple simple variants on braise applications. If you're making stews without browning your meat first, which you can't do in a rice cooker, you're doing it wrong. In addition to not making any logical sense, pointlessly sniping at Matt doesn't add anything to the conversation. It would have been easy to disagree with him without doing that.
- bane 14y ago
  He didn't say he doesn't like braises, not liking braises doesn't make you "not a foodie", it's ridiculous to question whether someone "is" or "isn't" a foodie when they say they are, and the rice cooker only admits to a couple simple variants on braise applications. If you're making stews without browning your meat first, which you can't do in a rice cooker, you're doing it wrong. I say this now with as much politeness as I can muster, when it comes to stews, you simply have no idea what you're talking about. And I say this as somebody who's mixed cultural household comes from two very old, very strong stew making cultures with a combined stew making experience in our cultural memory going back somewhere between 5-8 thousand years. (And I was just about to reply to you with some kind words about your passion for your fancy computer controlled crockpot)
  - tptacek 14y ago
    Link to the best stew recipe you can find for a protein that is normally browned that doesn't have, as its first step, browning the protein in a hot pan. Obviously, the first Cooks Illustrated recipe you find will say "the key to a good stew is proper browning of the meat", but then, as someone from a mixed cultural household with a background in stew-making, I'm sure you'd jaundiced about America's Test Kitchen; presumably, you'll scoff at Julia Child too (dry the meat, brown well). When I get home, I'll see what CIA's New Pro Chef says as well and cite it here. I'm guessing: they brown the meat first. Unfortunately, this is a topic that I do think I know something about.

tptacek 14y ago

The rice cooker meals are a gateway to more serious cooking. If we're honest with ourselves, the alternative for most nerds isn't "better cooking"; it's In N Out Burger. Always happy to see you commenting here, but a suggestion in this case would be to come up with the list of next steps forward for people embarking on cooking rice-cooker style. I already gave one (switch to a better protein than chicken breasts), but there's got to be many more.

mattmaroon 14y ago
Hmm. I don't really know. I tend to be a pretty all or nothing person (shocker right?) so the day I decided I wanted to learn to cook, I bought books like The French Laundry cookbook and the Culinary Institute of America's textbook. I'd tell someone who really wants to learn to cook to use rice makers for making rice. If someone was really interested in learning to cook, I'd tell them to get Ruhlman's 20 and Ad Hoc at Home. Both are relatively approachable and explain technique rather than just list off ingredients and instructions. Then work your way up the Thomas Keller chain (Bouchon, then TFL) because not only is he on everyone's short list for best chef in the world, but he puts a huge amount of effort into the books, even down to the typography, which a lot of other great chefs don't. (John Besh's book is great too btw.) He really goes out of his way to explain why he does the things he does.
- tptacek 14y ago
  Ruhlman's Twenty is a great first cooking book. Heartily seconded. I'd get "Ratio", and the Kindle version of "The Flavor Bible", to accompany it. That'll set you up for a lifetime of cooking without ever looking up a recipe again. (Keller's books are all Ruhlman's writing, right?)
  - mattmaroon 14y ago
    I think he helped on TFL and Bouchon, yeah. Bouchon is a great book too.
  - eru 14y ago
    Thanks. I already know "Ratio" as a good introductionary text. I shall get the others as well.

KaoruAoiShiho 14y ago

Can you explain in an objective way, talking about taste or whatever terms foodies use why rice-cookers cannot cook good food? I'm inclined to think that this is subjective and just one man's opinion, but artistic types have been defending their subjective opinions in objective terms for a long time. For example designers talk about hierarchy, organization, affordances, even though design is artistic. I'm curious to hear if you have something to say along these lines.

mattmaroon 14y ago
I'll give it a whack. First off, I'm defining "good food" rather strictly. Something you'd see in a chef-owned restaurant, where the chef either went to culinary school or worked in prestigious restaurants. (Cooking, like programming, can be learned without school.) I'm not saying they have to have a Michelin star, but they have to be making a real effort to make good food, so not Olive Garden. Most of the people who disagree with me simply don't like my definition of good food (and perhaps find it snobbish) which is totally fine. So imagine you took a list of everything on those menus, and started filtering out anything using a technique a rice cooker is incapable of. I suppose my statement might not be literally true, there might still be SOMETHING left on the list, but we'd be talking less than a percent. There are a number of things you just can't do (I think) in a rice cooker that you do at least one of in pretty much every dish you'd see at such a restaurant. You can't cook something at more than one temperature, for instance. You can't cook at any temperature above or below 100 celsius. You can't get a Maillard reaction (the browning of a steak or toast and it's associated flavors) or caramelization to happen. Right there you've knocked out almost everything cooked that you'll see on such a menu. You can't roast or sear or sautee anything. A rice cooker cooks only with conduction in a wet environment. (I'm assuming convection occurs too when there's still enough liquid in the pot.) It's too hot to simmer and too cold to braise. Even one pot dishes (and anything that isn't a one pot dish, which is the vast majority of the food I've described, is out by definition unless you have numerous rice cookers) usually take multiple steps. For instance toss the chicken in to brown, remove, sweat some onions, toss in some peppers, put in some plum tomatoes and white wine, raise the heat a little to deglaze and burn off the alcohol, lower the heat, add the chicken back in, braise. Etc. (Season the chicken with salt and a little piment d'esplette in the beginning and you've got poulet basquaise! You're welcome HN.) So what can you do in a rice cooker? Boil stuff, that's it. You rarely in any decent restaurant will be served something that has had nothing done to it but boiling, in fact, I can't think of anything and like I said, I'm a foodie. I travel around a lot and have been to a lot of restaurants.

ksherlock 14y ago

A lot of recipes/cooking styles were based on poverty. Meatballs? A few scraps of meat and stale bread. Those fancy french sauces? Needed to mask the rancid meat. Woks? For cooking with a minimum amount of fuel. And so on and so on. Would you say they couldn't cook anything good, either?

mattmaroon 14y ago
Not at all. A lot of my favorite foods are peasant foods especially French and Italian) none of which can be made in a rice cooker. They're often quite difficult to make, they just tend to use what are (or at least long ago were) the cheaper parts of the animal.
dingfeng_quek 14y ago
Because much of people's preference for certain types of food are acquired and not necessary (or even beneficial). During times of poverty, there are often pressures to change preferences, leading to a much higher rate of innovation. (Special case of general mechanism in creative destruction / evolution) Once a preference is established, it can stay for a long time because there's a physiological tendency to like food you've eaten (without ill effects) before. There are few social forces strong enough to override that.

sorbits 14y ago

> You cannot cook anything good in a rice maker […] except […] rice After spending time in Asia and getting a taste for glutinous rice [1], I now steam my rice in a bamboo steamer (which adds to the flavor): http://www.cookasianfood.com/asian-food/how-to-make-sticky-rice-bamboo-rice-steamer/ http://www.cookasianfood.com/asian-food/how-to-make-sticky-r... Highly recommended (both this type of rice and steaming your rice in bamboo)! [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glutinous_rice http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glutinous_rice

mattmaroon 14y ago
Buying that! I know far too little about Eastern cuisine.

jdechko 14y ago

I love to cook. I take pride in adding all the right spices, caramelizing onions properly (a 30+ minute task), marinating cuts of meat (before we became vegeterian), etc. But I also work, and have a family (wife isn't the best cook). So when I get home at 5pm, I have 2 small kids that want to jump me, and I immediately have to start on dinner. Honestly, it's all I can do some nights to not say "F--k it, we're ordering out." In my family, "good food" isn't an option most weeknights. So we either eat out (which is expensive and/or unhealthy) or we make simple crock-pot/ rice cooker recipes, which even my wife can do. It's not always black & white.

andrewcooke 14y ago

from outside, the american approach is going full-expert overboard about something that really is just part of everyday life. you see this with all kinds of things - americans can't simply go for a walk, they have to be wearing the right specialised shoes; they can't simply read a book they have to be using an e-reader with a special package that provides the latest volume from their bookclub; they can't simply cook a meal they have to be a foodie that obsesses over the latest source of truffles; they can't... obviously this is all caricature and cliche, but you yourself criticise others for being "very american" before acting out the same ritual.

jt2190 14y ago

Pick up a copy of Beth Hensperger's "The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook."[1] My wife and I made Thanksgiving Jook (Congee) with some homemade turkey broth and bits of meat from the carcass after Thanksgiving. I'm not sure how cooking it on the stovetop would have made it taste better. [1] http://www.harvardcommonpress.com/the-ultimate-rice-cooker-cookbook/ http://www.harvardcommonpress.com/the-ultimate-rice-cooker-c...

mamoswined 14y ago

I moonlight as a professional food writer. I have a $800 a month food budget. I've eaten at a quarter of the restaurants on the San Pellegrino List. I still use a rice cooker. Ebert unfortunately gives the wrong impression of the cuisine you can make with a rice cooker. He's a vegan and he can't eat, what do you expect? The reality is that rice cooker cuisine in Asian has come out of situations where people didn't have access to normal cooking appliances, but also could not start fires without burning down their dwellings. I learned about this in grad school where our dwellings were similar. It made me appreciate different types of rice, broths, the technique of steaming (a good rice cooker should come with an attached steamer)...what could be more foodie than that? I bet I can rival your cooking with just a rich cooker. I can make luscious steamed turbot with a parmesan asparagus risotto, steamed spicy Vietnamese sausage and silky coddled eggs over a lemon-grass infused rice, and hearty congee with miso and wild mushrooms. I use homemade stocks as bases for all of these. I make them in my crock pot, they don't take very long either. My rice cooker meals are better than the meals served at many restaurants. And to be honest, I use my own restaurant budget on meals that cost as much as $300 a person, which leaves not so much for day to day food. But damn if I'm going to eat crappy food. Rice cooker? Makes cheap, easy, and delicious meals if you have the skills. I would definitely not recommend Ebert's cooking advice or cookbook though.