Rice Cooker Review

I subscribe to a multitude of YouTube Channels.  Some of my favorites are families who vlog on a daily basis.  Go figure since I'm single and have no children that I love to watch the lives of parents raising children, planning meals, and dealing with the ups and downs of life with a large family.  One of the families I love - J House Vlogs - shows a lot of the recipes the Mom, Kendra, makes.  She is an avid user of her crock pot...and rice cooker.  When I saw her utilize her rice cooker, I thought "where have those been all my life?"  I polled my Facebook audience for recommendations for a good rice cooker and my friend, Liz, recommended this gem: Prep Solutions by Progressive Rice Cooker, 4 Piece Set - 6 Cup Capacity.  I ordered it and thought I'd try it out.

The set comes with a cooker bucket and steaming lid, an insert that sits inside the lid of the bucket while cooking, a beaker for measuring rice and water, and a rice spoon....or spaddle as I like to call it.  (Rice in the picture, not included).

The instruction book includes a step-by-step process on cooking your rice and, seriously, a trained monkey can do this.  You measure out the appropriate amount of rice in the beaker and pour it in the bucket.  You add salt - as much as you'd like - and then the amount of water in the beaker the instructions call for based on how much rice you want to cook.  For my first use, I cooked about 2 1/2 cups of rice.  

I make my own concoction that I love which is simply rice (or quinoa, which I'll test in this cooker in the future), black beans and grilled chicken.  Mix it all up and eat!  It's one of my staples for dinner.  

I usually would either boil the rice in a pan - which would sometimes stick and have an unpleasant result - or use the Minute Rice bags.  Though rice is rice, I never could perfect the goodness that I get when I dine out, at places like PF Changs.  I measured out my ingredients, snapped on the lid and set the microwave for 15 minutes - the time allotted in the instruction book for the amount of rice I was making.  In the meantime, I cooked my black beans and grilled my chicken so they'd be ready when the rice finished.  

The rice came out beautifully!  It had the consistency of authentic steamed rice.  I was in love! 

If you enjoy rice and don't have a large family to feed, or want a small appliance that won't take up much space, I highly recommend this rice cooker.