The Most Amazing Kitchen Equipment

If somebody should ask you "What is the most amazing kitchen equipment?" What would you say? Is it the stove? The electric oven? The griller? The deep fryer?

Well for me, the most amazing kitchen equipment will be the rice cooker. Maybe because I'm asian but if you don't understand why, let me give you one important question. What can you do with rice cooker?

If you can say nothing but "rice cooker is to cook rice", go on, read further.

You're absolutely correct. Rice cooker is to cook rice. But what rice? Plain Rice? there's one. Throw in half a slab of butter and some cream style corn, you'll have a buttercorn rice. There's two. Throw in sliced shiitake mushroom, kuri (japanese chestnut), sesame oil and spices, You'll get very fragrant mushroom rice. There goes three. Mix the two combination and throw in butter, mushroom and added with crushed garlic. You'll have garlic butter rice. There's 4. And many many more combinations to follow. you capisce? Hainanese Chicken Rice, Thai Pineapple steamed rice, Paella, risotto, briyani, sushi... The almighty rice cooker will do it for you.

Is that all? Of course not. You can throw the rice cooker to disarm the robbers, plant your begonias and orchids in the cooking pot and it does make a good motorcycle helmet. I just don't know whether it's legal...

But other than those (un)attractive use of rice cooker, you (we) can make steamboat (shabu-shabu) with it. Just put it on top of table, put boiling broth and start dipping your steamboat. And it only cost you 300-500W instead of normal electric steamboat that consume 850-1500W.

Anymore? Ah, I see the young fellow there raise his hand. You're a what? A dim some? Ah, I do hope the rest of you is brighter to realize that you can use the rice cooker as a dim sum steamer.

And of course. It can be used as a steamboat, it can also be use as a soup warmer. Fancy those cauldron-shaped soup warmer in the restaurant? Here you got a modern looking soup warmer that looked like rice cooker and able to cook rice too!

Yeah, plenty eh? Not mentioning it's portability and throwability (in case of robbers) we got so many use of rice cooker. Trust me, I can write a lot more about this.

Respect your rice cooker... and peace.

Cons