Your rice cooker is a wonderful little machine for turning out perfectly cooked, fluffy white rice. But now that you’ve perfected your rice-cooking technique, you may be wondering whether you can add other things, such as vegetables.
You can add vegetables to the rice in your rice cooker, as long as they are chopped or diced to a small size. Since vegetables vary in how long they need to cook, some can be put in with the rice at the beginning while others will need to be added in during the cooking process. Frozen vegetables can also be cooked with the rice.
Hard vegetables like carrots, sweet potatoes, celery, beets, and most squashes take longer to cook, so they should be cut into small cubes or julienned before mixing them with the rice. Even with the full cooking time in the rice cooker, they may turn out with an “al dente” texture, which is delicious for vegetable connoisseurs.
More tender vegetables, such as onions, spinach, and zucchini, will cook quickly. Unless you want them very soft or mushy, you might want to add them halfway through the cooking process. Just open the lid on the rice cooker and toss in the vegetables.
You can find hundreds of rice cooker recipes online that combine vegetables and rice, sometimes along with broth in place of water or sauces like teriyaki. Some recipes even contain meat or seafood.
How To Cook Frozen Vegetables In a Rice Cooker? (With Rice)
You probably love your rice cooker for its speed and convenience. It’s the perfect appliance for making a quick dinner for a busy family. But if you don’t have time to chop up vegetables, don’t worry.
Frozen vegetables turn out great when put in the rice cooker. You can toss them in with the raw rice and water at the beginning of the cooking process, and they will both thaw and cook by the time the rice is done. Some people recommend that you lay the frozen vegetables on top of the rice rather than mixing them in.
Whether you use commercially packaged frozen vegetables or garden produce you have frozen yourself, they have probably been blanched before freezing. Blanching involves partially cooked vegetables quickly but briefly in boiling water.
Since frozen vegetables are already partly cooked, they’ll take a shorter time to cook than fresh vegetables. Still, harder vegetables like carrots or potatoes will still take a bit longer than more tender vegetables. By the time they thaw and cook with the rice in the rice cooker, they might still come out a bit crunchy.
To make sure your frozen vegetables cook to the desired level of doneness, select small-sized vegetables like peas and corn. Chunky-cut vegetables like the popular California blend of broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots might not cook all the way through when mixed with the rice.
Can You Steam Fresh or Frozen Vegetables In a Rice Cooker?
By now, you know the rice cooker is more versatile than you thought. In fact, you don’t even have to cook rice in it. Sometimes, you just want to cook vegetables to serve as a side dish.
Your rice cooker can be used to steam either fresh or frozen vegetables. The time needed to steam them will vary, depending on the type and size of the vegetable. Fresh vegetables will generally take a bit longer to cook compared to frozen ones.
Most new rice cookers will come with a steaming basket, but if yours doesn’t have one, you can easily buy a collapsible stainless steel steaming basket that adjusts to fit your cooker, no matter what size the inside space may be.
To begin, pour a cup or two of water in the bottom of the cooker, add the vegetables to the basket and close the lid. Your rice cooker may be equipped with a steam button. If not, set the timer to 15 minutes or so, and the vegetables will begin to cook when the water boils.
You may need to experiment with the cooking time. The same as steaming vegetables in a conventional manner, the size and texture of the vegetables, as well as your preferred level of crispness or softness, will affect how long you let them steam.
Frozen vegetables, since they are partly cooked, will not take as long to steam as fresh vegetables. On average you can figure two or three minutes less steaming time for frozen vegetables in your rice cooker.
What Else Can You Cook In a Rice Cooker?
While rice and vegetables taste great, they aren’t always enough to satisfy big appetites. But that’s not a problem because your rice cooker can make entire meals.
A rice cooker is great for cooking any grain, such as quinoa, barley, or oatmeal. You can also cook dried beans and some types of meat, such as chicken or pork.
Breakfast in a Rice Cooker
Oatmeal is especially easy in a rice cooker because you don’t have to constantly watch it and stir it like you do when you cook it on the stove. All you have to do is add the amount of oats you want with the proportional amount of water, along with any sweeteners or flavors. Mix it up, turn on the rice cooker, and leave it alone until it’s done.
With the steamer basket, rice cookers can make soft-boiled or hard-boiled eggs, though you may need to experiment with the cooking time to achieve your desired level of doneness. Or, you can make a full pot of scrambled eggs and keep them warm for a breakfast buffet.
Rice Cooker Bean Dishes
For dried beans like pinto beans or chickpeas, it’s a good idea to soak them overnight or as the package directs before putting them into the rice cooker. They’ll get tender much faster.
If you’re pressed for time, you can make a rice and bean meal by adding canned beans to your rice while it cooks. For extra flavor, use chicken broth for part of the water and add onions, celery, peppers, and seasonings to taste.
Cooking Meat in a Rice Cooker
Cooking meat in a rice cooker is a bit trickier. The easiest way is to add diced pieces of chicken, beef, or pork to your rice so they cook together. Some recipes without rice, such as rice cooker chili, begin by cooking the meat in oil at the bottom of the pot before adding the rest of the ingredients.
If you’re cooking larger pieces of meat, such as chicken thighs, keep in mind that the rice cooker is essentially a boiler and a steamer. You might want to brown your meat in a frying pan to get a crisp and flavorful surface before cooking it the rest of the way in the rice cooker.
The cooking time for meat will vary widely depending on the type and thickness of the meat, whether there are bones, and so on. When you’re trying it for the first time, it’s a good idea to test it with a meat thermometer. Minimum temperatures for safely-cooked meats are 165F for chicken and poultry and 145F for beef and pork.
Rice Cooker Desserts
Believe it or not, you can even make desserts in a rice cooker. Rice pudding is an obvious choice, but tapioca pudding can also be cooked on the porridge setting. Rice cookers are also great for making cooked cinnamon apples or peach crisp.
You may also be surprised to learn that rice cookers can make cakes and brownies. Most recipes call for mixing ingredients from scratch, such as flour, sugar, baking soda, and so on. However, there are some methods of making a cake from a mix.
When the cake is done cooking, you just remove the inner pot and turn it upside down on a plate. The nonstick surface should help the cake fall right out. This makes a pineapple upside-down cake perfect for a rice cooker.
Rice cookers do vary in capacity and settings, so it may take some trial and error as you learn to cook new dishes. Still, you’ll agree that the convenience and versatility of a rice cooker make it suitable for much more than rice.