One of the most staple food in Asia is Rice. We Asians love our rice. No doubt about that. We can eat rice as breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Almost all households in Asia have a rice cooker so to save effort and to also have a soft fluffy rice every single time. For the ones that don't own them, they know (by tradition) how to cook rice on the stove but there's always a risk of it burning when you don't closely monitor it.
But for other countries who don't eat rice that often and doesn't know how to steam rice or doesn't own a rice cooker, and for students who live in dormitories, I discovered an efficient way how to cook it with the same result that rice cookers deliver using your oven toaster.
For most of us, we always see our oven toasters as a tool no more than toasting bread. I actually been experimenting a lot of things recently with our old (almost about-to-retire looking) oven toaster. This oven toaster had been sitting in our storage room for I don't know how long until I decided to get it out and do some cooking/baking with it.
As you may notice, our oven toaster only has a single and constant temperature. Which would be around 200 degree Celsius if not more. The knob on the lower right is obviously the timer which can only go up to 15min. This is the most simple and basic oven toaster I've seen around (so far) and a new one can only cost you $15- $20 if not less. That's about P550 - P850.
Okay, so onto cooking rice with it, you will need:
- Oven Toaster
- A semi-deep pan that can fit inside (I've used my Loaf pan since its all I have. You can use those little thick glass pans that are oven safe)
- Aluminum Foil
- 1 Cup of Rice
- 2 1/4 Cup of Water
Servings: 2 cups of cooked rice
Instructions:
1. Wash the rice and put it in the pan along with the water.
2. Cover it with Aluminum Foil and put it inside the oven toaster.
3. Set your timer to 10 min and let it cook. When the timer is done, just leave it inside for another 5min to soften a little more.
4. Then set your timer to 8min. When the timer is done, just leave again in there for another 5min.
5. Check if the rice is cooked to your liking. If there's still a lot of moist inside, pop it back in and cook for another 3-5min.
6. When the rice is cooked, mix the rice with a spoon so it cools down faster and gives you a fluffier rice.
For this picture, I've only used half of the ingredients and it gave me a cup of rice for dinner. So with 1 cup of uncooked rice, you can actually get double.
I compared the rice I cooked in the oven toaster (left image) and the one we cooked on the stove (right image). Please note that both rice were cooked using the same amount of ingredients.
I prefer the one I cooked in the toaster because it gives the same texture as it would be in a rice cooker. It is moist and fluffy and perfect for saucy dishes. The other one is a little hard to bite on to but my mom prefers that.
I experimented on this because my boyfriend doesn't have rice cooker but would like to cook rice. I gave him some Japanese curry cubes and its perfect to enjoy with a soft fluffy white rice.
I believe oven toasters have more potential. I'm on my quests to experiment different things with it. Stay tuned!
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