yeah...rice cookers are cool.
I used to think of buying one, but.. i don't know.
I don't like a bunch of specialized gadgets taking up counter/cupboard space.
so i feel like if i can get by with the sauce pan for something , then i'll do it the old fashioned way.
I guess i like my mutli purpose pots and pans for most things.
It was getting kind of rediculous, a friend of mine liked pampered chef products, and i started to notice that everytime i went to a pampered chef party, i'd get all this cool stuff, but it wasn't versatile.
So i was starting to accumulate like at least one big product or appliance for each different type of ingredient on the planet.
I'm trying to de-clutter right now. i just got done cleaning 2 shelves in my bathroom linen closet. On 2 shelves, one entire brown trash bag worth of clutter to toss out.
I do have a waffle iron i can't part with, and i like my slow cooker and foreman grill. I use the food processor quite a bit, i have a blender i use sporadically, like when i get on a smoothie kick, but i hate cleaning it.
I also have a toaster, which is funny cuz you think of that as a staple, but i rarely use it these days, it actually stays in the cupboard now instead of the counter top.
(Mainly cuz i've been eating less wheat and bready things and trying for more rice!)
But yeah, i'm tempted to buy a rice cooker , but in the meantime, the japanese method is tried and true.
We recently received a rice cooker as a gift. We've used it a couple of times and it seems to work fine. I'm not sure it's worth the money and space though...it's not that hard to make rice on the stove or in the oven. I remain a skeptic.
kaebea, we got a bunch of Pampered Chef stuff for xmas. I'm not sure what the point of them is so they're still in their boxes. We have good pans and bakeware, so it's not clear to either of us why we would suddenly start cooking meat and brownies in stoneware. We'll probably sell them on ebay or something (shh! don't tell MIL!).
I love rice, but I'm hugely lazy and hate cooking rice. I buy the packaged pre-cooked rice from Trader Joe's. $2.00 a package, ready in 1 minute 30 seconds, exact portions for 2 people, perfect for me!
Yes , sometimes it's a pain to cook the rice on the stovetop, so normally i make it in 2 cup increments and then reheat it as i need it for a few days.
Haven't tried the precooked rice, but i love tj's everything else!
they have the cheapest cost raw almond butter that i am always stocked up on.
baffled, i hear ya about the pampered chef stuff,
I do have the stoneware pizza stone and the rack thing it sits in (which i had to purchase separatly!) . I had wanted one for a while, but i was under the impression that it could basically live in your oven, which is not the case, SO....I have this big huge pizza stone that i have to keep on a shelf , with the rack for it and it seems soooo breakable. I'm sure it won't be with me for the rest of my life at the rate i drop breakables. ( on accident)
and you aren't supposed to submerge it in water ? what the heck!!!
cook ware should be cleanable, don't you think.?
and i actually was given the microwave pampered chef rice cooker, because i think at the time i had mentioned to my friend that i wanted a rice cooker.
but i wanted a normal rice cooker.
the pampered chef one worked ok, but you had to measure and cook just right and i don't think it did brown rice very well.
Normally i don't like to give away gifts that i recieve , but i did give that one to charity. I just got better at making rice on the stove top than trying to use that microwave thing. Also, you had to do half the cooking time on low power and half on high, and in the end, i figured the cooking time was just as long as making it on the stove top.! Didn't help that my microwave display is unreadable--some of the lights are burned out so you cant see the digital # display, so trying to set the power was like guess work.
the pots i use , i got off ebay because they are discontinued, i don't know why cuz they're great pots. the pyrex visionware? great for making rice in.
kaebea~Stoneware can be put in water (once cooled) but you can't use soap. The stoneware is porous and will make everything you eat out of it afterwards taste like soap. I have the bread pans and they do turn out crustier loaves! I also wonder why you were told that it couldn't live in the oven? All the PC shows I've been to suggest you leave your stoneware in the oven so they season quicker.
We have a pizza stone (not pampered chef) that lives in our oven. It's great for making bread or pizza or just for browning the bottoms of things if you're baking them in a baking dish (eg, meat or crackers). In our experience they do eventually crack in half though. We go through one pizza stone every year or two, but since they aren't expensive, I figure it's worth annual replacement not to have to take the thing in and out of the oven every time you use it. The one we have now has been broken in half for a couple of months but we're still using it...No shards, no one has died, etc, etc.
Huh, yeah i just looked it up on the pampered chef web site.
I must have gotten mixed up about the no soap vs no water, but i seem to be so messy and hard on my cooking equipment that i have to resort to soap and brillo pads to clean off caked on burnings.
And my friend who used to sell the stuff told me not to leave it in the oven full time... maybe that is some thing the company tries to push so that they don't crack so often? I don't know. but the pampered chef stone is $26, which isn't quite pocket change to me... i don't know, are other types of stones less expensive? plus the rack for the stone is another 25$ or so, so the whole 'system' put me back $50.
I try to avoid those 'parties' anymore. they sound like fun at first, but then you get sucked in and agree to have one of your own. I used to think to my self "well it's just a party, it's for fun! I don't HAVE to buy anything."
How naive i was. i now realize they are just sales people coming to your house. Not really my idea of a good time i guess...I mean i despise telemarketing, don't like to be bothered by people knocking on my door to sell siding, and completely ignore, swerve and avoid those guys at the center kiosks in the mall that target single shoppers like me.
lol, no those parties don't sound like a good idea if you feel compelled to buy stuff you don't want.
We usually find a pizza stone at BB&B for $15 or so. Not too much to spend every year or two. Because the stone lives in the oven, we just toss the rack. I've never used it.
Ok,
so say i decide to give my pizza stone a home in the oven.
I figure it would get the bottom rack.
Now if i were to roast some veggies in my corning ware, would/could/should i place the dish directly ON the pizza stone? or put it on the top rack?
And for baking in metal dishes, like someone mentioned bread, do you mean that you put the metal baking pan on the stone, or just the precooked loaf?
I bet it would be good for toasting stuff.
I only make actual pizza once in a great while, although i'm getting back into the whole foods cooking, hence the rice topic, as opposed to taco bell, deli sandwiches, mom's house, panera bread, which had slowly become the norm for me.
I used to cook all the time...I think i quit because baking sweets would lead to me eating most of the recipe and i was gaining weight.
It's sort of funny, i was just talking to my friend today. She was telling me how hard it was to eat the way Kevin Trudeau reccomends, with no fast food, no prepackaged food, no brand name products, and i was just thinking to myself : that's how i try to eat anyway!
sorry i tend to run off topic sometimes...
I would say put the pizza stone on the most bottom rack that you have (it's better for pizza there.) Then put the other rack as close to the middle as possible. I would put other pans on the middle rack, not on the pizza stone.
As far as bread goes, I have a stoneware bread pan. That's what I was referring too. You could do a round loaf on the pizza stone though. I also think that anything you'd put on a cookie sheet would do well on the pizza stone.
Bottom shelf, as zenor said. I bake bread directly on the stone--no pan.
As far as everything else goes, it really depends on the food. When roasting veggies, I put the sheet pan directly on the stone, because it helps to brown the bottom of the veggies while the ambient oven heat browns the tops. If I'm baking a cake or brownies or something, then I put the pan on a wire shelf. The operative question would be: do I want the bottom of this thing to be browned?
My family recently started making rice in the microwave...it was my brother's idea, and now my parents are hooked. No more pots with rice stuck to the bottom. It comes out perfectly. Just get a microwave safe bowl, some water, and stir every several minutes. Cover towards the end of cooking.
I still make mine on the stove, but I have a nonstick pot and just make enough for one serving at a time.
