Product Description

The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook proves there's more to this popular appliance than a convenient way to cook a pot of rice. Complete with tips on buying and using a rice cooker, as well as selecting and preparing every kind of rice, grain, and dried bean, this book includes 250 recipes for everything from hot breakfast cereals and creamy desserts and puddings to classic vegetable, bean, and rice combinations and savory whole meal cuisines.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1030 in Books
• Published on: 2003-04-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781558322035
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Amazon.com Review
Beth Hensperger and Julie Kaufmann's The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook offers 250 timesaving, convenient, and healthy recipes for making everything from simple white rice to full-course meals. This cookbook proves the rice cooker--which tends to have a bad rap as a never-opened or oft-neglected wedding gift--can be surprisingly versatile: not only does it prepare your rice, it can be used for every dinner course--salad, soup, vegetable, entree, and even dessert.

There is a complete buying and cooking guide for the many rice varieties, as well as other whole grains such as barley, millet, wheat berry, and quinoa. Many of the recipes provide convenient alternative cooking methods for traditional dishes like Italian risottos (the Italian Sausage Risotto is wonderful). Hensperger and Kaufmann show the rice cooker can also work miracles for hot breakfast cereals and porridges with such recipes as Hot Fruited Oatmeal. Delightful main courses include Steamed Ginger Salmon and Asparagus in Black Bean Sauce, and the meal is done almost exclusively within the rice cooker for simple preparation and cleanup. The dessert section has many ideas beyond the expected Old-Fashioned Rice Pudding--the Poached Pears with Grand Marnier Custard Sauce is one elegant and sophisticated example. Both authors of this cookbook are seasoned food writers and this combined effort gives tasty, easy, and healthy recipes that will motivate you to use what has been, until now, an underutilized appliance. --Teresa Simanton

From Library Journal
Hensperger is well known as the author of a dozen or so books on bread. Here, she and Kaufmann, food editor of the San Jose Mercury News, show just how versatile a simple rice cooker can be. They start with rice, of course, providing an excellent guide to the numerous varieties now available and cooking directions. Included are recipes for dozens of rice dishes from risotto to sushi and a chapter on other grains. There are also recipes that use the cooker to steam vegetables, main dishes, dim sum, and tamales, and readers will find a good assortment of desserts, from silky custards to creamy puddings. Other books, such as Stephanie Lyness's Cooking with Steam (o.p.), have focused on various aspects of "steam cuisine," but Hensperger and Kaufmann's is far more ambitious and wide-ranging. For most collections.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Ever-advancing technology continues to transform kitchen techniques and processes. The rice cooker has been on the market for many years, but its appeal outside those communities traditionally dependent on rice was limited. New models of the rice cooker employ "fuzzy logic" in order to duplicate the intuitive techniques of the best rice cooks. As Beth Hensperger and Julie Kaufmann point out in The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook, these machines' usefulness extends beyond merely making perfect white rice. These high-tech gizmos also produce risotto, polenta, chili, soup, and puddings, often better than traditional methods. The authors have developed recipes for foods as diverse as Indian lamb biryani, Spanish paella, Japanese sushi, Mexican frijoles, French lentils, English steamed pudding, and American split pea soup. Anyone whose use of this appliance has been limited solely to rice will find much to take advantage of here. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

One thing to consider...SMELLS
I have owned rice cookers for many years. My latest, the Zojirushi NS-ZAC10, is the best I have ever used. I figured it would be a good idea to branch out from using the rice cooker to cook only rice, so I purchased this highly recommended book.

While the book is very good, and the recipes I have tried so far have all been quite tasty, there is a major consideration that you should be aware of when making many of the recipes in this book: residual odors.

Yes, when you use your rice cooker to make the delicious "creamy breakfast oatmeal" with steel-cut oats, bear in mind that your steamed white rice will smell of cinnamon for at least three or four batches afterwards. My 11-year old (a steamed rice 'purist') noticed the cinnamon 'essence' immediately and complained that 'something was wrong with the rice.'

Similarly with any of the dishes which call for sauteing onions in the rice cooker, or adding other strongly aromatic ingredients. If you use your rice cooker primarily for preparing perfect (and I mean PERFECT) steamed rice, you may not want any other flavors mingling in there.

Just something to keep in mind.

Otherwise, the book is a great resource. There are a few minor inconsistencies (try finding 'congee' in the index), and the resource materials can be a bit confusing (to be fair, the number of rice varieties is quite daunting). And if you are an experienced cook you may get tired of being told the exact procedure for washing rice in every recipe, but all in all, the sheer variety alone is easily worth the price. Also, it is worth noting that if you have a fuzzy logic rice cooker, you will not be able to use it for any of the recipes that employ steaming (which is a fair number of dishes), but you can easily adapt these recipes to any another stovetop steaming setup you may have.

Just remember to plan your rice cooker experiments around your need for 'un-tainted' steamed rice, and you will enjoy "The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook"

turns a rice cooker into a major kitchen appliance
I used to use my rice cooker several times a week. With this cook book and my new fuzzy logic rice cooker, I use it several times a day. It will appeal to cooks of all levels. For cooks experienced with rice and whole grains, the most important part of the book will probably be recipes for the porridge cycle of a fuzzy logic cooker: rice porridge, puddings, custards, and hot cereals. Even for experienced rice cooks, however, this book has excellent information on different varieties of rice and different types of dishes. In addition to many styles of rice dishes, it includes recipes for other grains such as couscous, bulgur and grits. It is well laid out and has commentaries on grains and dishes that will enable creative cooks to invent their own recipes as well as using the very tasty recipes included in the book. Although the recipes suggest the size of the cooker to be used, you need to use some common sense. I have a small cooker and have successfully made recipes suggested for other size cookers. This book is utterly clear and easy to follow. All the recipes work, and all taste wonderful. If you have a rice cooker, especially a fuzzy logic cooker, you need this book.

We use this cookbook at least 3 times a week (usually more)
I bought a rice cooker, learned the basics of preparing rice and then wanted to expand my skills. So I bought a few cookbooks but this is the ONLY one that has recipes my whole family loves, so much so that we use it at least 3-5 times a week and never feel like we're eating the same thing.
The recipes aren't just for rice but for all sorts of grains and vegetables and fruits as well. In fact, I'm ready to throw out my crockpot because the meals prepared in the rice cooker are much better, don't have that overcooked, stewed taste you can get with a crockpot and have all the convenience and ease that I need with my busy schedule. The directions are clear and the recipes range from the simple (plain cooked grains) to the more complex (rice with coconut and currants... or grits with cheese and spices )
The ultimate test of a good cookbook, of course, is getting compliments and raves about the food. Every time I've made a recipe from this book, the food has been devoured quickly. We rarely have leftovers and my son's friends even make a point of looking in the kitchen to see if the rice cooker is turned on ( yes, the recipes in this cookbook are THAT good).