Rice is genuinely such an amazing filler
We finally got a rice cooker. It’s a cheap-ass one not a Zojirushi but it does fine. I can make rice without it but man it is nice to fire and forget. And it does better than I can manually.
Rice cooker is a total game changer. Essential.
I don’t get it. I make perfect rice every time in a cheap pot from Walmart. It’s so easy.
My trick is simmering the rice the normal way on low heat for 15 minutes (after bringing it to a boil, of course) and then taking it off the heat and wrapping the pot in a towel for… ever. Seriously. It only needs 5 more minutes of steaming, but I can leave it sitting there for 20-25 minutes and still have perfect, hot rice when the rest of my food is done. Not a single grain will be stuck to the pan. I use an ordinary both towel.
Meanwhile, I used to have a rice cooker and the rice stuck to the bottom every time. It was cheap, but still. It failed at it’s one job.
It’s not that rice is difficult to do on a stovetop. It’s that it takes more time and is an extra thing to think about. You need to be there to start the rice, you need to be there five minutes later when it boils to turn it down to simmer, then you need to be there again 15 minutes later to take it off the stove. If you’re cooking other stuff in the meantime, that’s multiple timers you have to keep track of. If you want to walk away and do something else, it can only be stuff that’s fits into this 15 minutes window.
If you use a rice cooker, then it’s one minute to set it up and you don’t have to think about it again until you eat. Doesn’t matter if it’s half an hour later or five hours later, you still have perfect rice. All it costs is a minute of time commitment.
Fuck prices, all of that food is wildly unhealthy and should be avoided even without looking at prices.
All you really need is a slow cooker, skillet, sheet pan, wooden cutting board, and chef’s knife to make quick, delicious, and healthy meals. The money you save will pay for all of that in a month.
Listen, I’m all for cooking at home, It’s what occupies most of my evenings, but I’m tired of pretending that fast food doesn’t WILDLY add convenience to my life. A “30 minute meal” usually drags out to an hour plus if you include prep time of getting the ingredients together and scrubbing all your shit down afterward. I am of the class that does not have a dish washer, so that last step takes a while.
That’s not even to mention the time it takes to plan out your meals, shop for ingredients, and at the end of the day, you might not even be eating healthy. You need to incorporate so many fruits and veggies into your diet that, if you’re buying fresh and are one of the many unlucky people that live in a food desert, will break your bank right open. Even frozen food isn’t cheap.
Eating healthy, cheap, and quickly are almost impossible to get all together without already having conveniences that speed things up. And sometimes, you just want to eat and not think about any of that shit.
