Rice Ninja

We recently had a death in the VP household and it was traumatic – our rice maker died. I pushed the button and expected to hear the familiar *click* and see the bright red light turn on, but instead, nothing happened. Our rice maker just sat there staring back at me. In all fairness, our rice maker, that cost approximately $15, was 9 years old and even though it was in really good shape, nine years in generic small appliance years is equal to 300 in normal human years. God speed rice maker.

The Death Of A Rice Maker

The Death Of A Rice Maker

Approximately three seconds after I realized we no longer had a rice maker I felt like I did when I moved out of my parents’ house and discovered that Minute Rice actually cooks in one minute – confused. I had no idea how to actually cook rice without a rice maker. I pulled up Start Cooking from Google and followed their directions exactly (no butter) using my California Organic Basmati white rice. My only problem was, what I ended up with was a huge mess. I ran out of water before my rice was even halfway done and then I wasn’t sure how much more water to add. My rice was underdone and overdone at the SAME time. I didn’t even want to think about how horrible brown rice was going to turn out. I opened up Amazon and in a fit of irritation and purchased a new rice cooker.

Our Rice Ninja

Our Rice Ninja

Zojirushi doesn’t just manufacture rice makers, they make rice cookers. Seriously, there is nothing this little machine cannot do with rice. We call our rice cooker the Rice Ninja, it is that good. Our Rice Ninja make white rice, brown rice, wild rice and even steel cut oats overnight with a timer function. There are thousands of recipes to make in the Rice Ninja too. Zojirushi has a recipe for a whole wheat cake, Weelicious takes on macaroni and cheese, and Bits of Tastes makes chicken with ginger and Chinese five spice. People are more than a little obsessed with their own Rice Ninjas and what they can do.

Our Rice Ninja hasn’t helped out with any polenta or quinoa yet, but my steel cut oats this morning were so good I’m willing to hand over control when I find a new recipe. I don’t think our Rice Ninja is going to inspire any cookbooks or blogs, but it certainly does make us want to eat better rice and for FODMAPers that is a huge deal. So, am I terribly sad our old rice maker moved on? Nope, it lived a pretty darn good life.

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