Hui Leng Tay - The Everything Rice Cooker Cookbook

This book does not advocate the rice cooker as the only appliance you should own in the kitchen, completely replacing your stovetop cooking or one-pot slow cooker. Rather, it hopes to present the rice cooker as a complementary tool in the kitchen, an additional helper that assists you as you whip up a new repertoire of simple home-based recipes. The process of rice cooker cooking should be enjoyed. It cannot be emphasized enough that this style of cooking is really about techniques, including the cooking sequence, knowing the ingredients well, experimenting, and building the experience. With that, this book starts you with a precious grain of rice and leaves you with an open mind toward the possibilities of your rice cooker.

It is not strange to hear this greeting, as a friendly, cheery form of Hello in Chinese communities around the world. It is also common to hear workers protecting their iron rice bowl, meaning their stable occupation. The popular Seven Necessities that Chinese people considered important in a household are firewood, rice, oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar, and tea. It's not difficult to explain the importance of rice in the sequence! Rice has been associated with many traditions and cultures around the world. In Sanskrit, the word for rice also meant sustainer of the human race. Indeed, rice is a staple for a large part of the world's population, especially in Asia, where more than 75 percent of the world's rice is harvested.

The precise origins of rice are lost to history, but it is believed that rice was probably domesticated, after wheat and barley, in a few places such as the Yangtze Valley in China and India, in 6500 B.C. It finally became a staple crop in the United States in the late 1600s. During this time journey, rice also reached Japan, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. Today each region utilizes rice either as part of cultivation, or as a staple in the diet.

Rice is easy to digest, naturally sodium- and cholesterol-free, and contains only a trace of fat. It is also rich in proteins, with a good balance of the essential amino acids required by the human body systems. Theamount of essential amino acid lysine is one and a half times that of wheat, and twice that of corn.

The freshest and healthiest grains go through many steps from the point of harvest to finally being sold on the shelves. These include sieving (a destoner to remove gravel, magnet to remove metal bits, and color sorter to remove seeds and fragments); hulling, to remove the husk; milling, to go from brown to white; polishing, to ensure the rice is shiny and attractive, and cleaning, to extend storage life.

Rice has a far richer diversity than the average supermarket shelf suggests. There are more than 40,000 different varieties of rice, but not all are grown commercially. Different types of rice may also have different levels of starch, causing one type of rice to be stickier or looser than another. Rice is generally categorized into whole-grain or white rice, as well as by the length of the grain. Whole-grain rice is minimally processed and so retains a nutrientrich husk. Since whole-grain rice is not husked, the cooking time typically is longer than that for milled white rice. Whole-grain rice tends to be more flavorful, aromatic, and colorful. The most common variety of whole-grain rice is brown rice; the lesser-known types are black rice and red rice.

Black rice is a rice grain that looks like wild rice when dry. It turns deep purple when cooked and has rich and nutty flavors. The glutinous variety is the black sticky rice, which is used mainly in many Chinese and Southeast Asian desserts. Red rice is unpolished, and the color of the bran is typically maroon-red with the smell of husk. Also known as red cargo rice, it has a chewy texture compared to white rice, and tastes nutty when cooked.