Rice Cooker Fun!

For my birthday this year, my parents gave me a rice cooker, a crock pot and a little George Foreman grill. Thank you, parents! I think it's because I never ask for anything in particular for my birthday (which I guess makes it a little impossible to find a good gift for me considering how picky I am sometimes), so buying me cooking supplies/kitchen appliances is a pretty safe bet.


But I'm also scared of the unfamiliar and since I'd never used a rice cooker before, the idea of using the rice cooker intimidated me for a while. Finally, one night, when my boyfriend insisted we watch the movie Hidalgo -- a quasi-Western set in the Middle East -- which was close to 2 hours in length, I decided it was the perfect time to experiment with the rice cooker. My mother had also given me some brown rice and my rice cooker adventure began.... Turns out brown rice takes about two hours to be done. And since I hadn't accounted for two hours (I assumed the rice cooker would be more efficient than me cooking rice normally), I ended up eating scrambled eggs with Feta as a snack instead. I may be wrong, but I think that's probably a very healthy, tasty snack.


Anyhow, my next adventure with rice was Basmati rice. There's this amazing Persian restaurant close to where I live and their rice is divine. And since I want to also make delicious rice like them, I decided to use my rice cooker to make some Basmati rice. Well you can't just eat Basmati rice plan -- I guess you could, but that's not a meal then -- so I also made some tomato sauce and served those two with chicken. It was delicious and healthy, but I need to learn some portion control. I made that rice on Sunday and I still have half a pot of it left and my boyfriend and I have eaten about 5 or 6 servings of that meal until now. 


So here's how I did it,  although you may want to cut down on the ingredients and not make enough for a small army. 


I put two cups of rice in my rice cooker. Also, it turns out that you're not supposed to measure cups of uncooked rice in regular cups but in standardized rice cups (?) which are 180 mL, not the regualar 240 mL. 


It only took about ten minutes to cook (as opposed to the brown rice which took a century!)


In the meantime, I got a can of diced tomatoes, put it in a pan and started heating it. In a separate pan, I began sauteeing some bell peppers and onions. As soon as they started heating up and looking like they were ready, I moved them over to the first pan with the diced tomatoes and mixed everything together.


Then I used a pot and cooked some pieces of chicken through. I originally just cooked/boiled them in water for a healthier alternative but then added some oil to make it tastier. 


And here is how a plate of this concoction ended up looking. Deliciously healthy and satisfying.