inaugural run of the rice cooker

Yesterday I baked potatoes in the crock (5 hours on HI). Today I wanted to give the rice cooker a try.

the cooker

I picked up an Aroma ARC-363NG at a thrift store. The label says $7.99 but there was a discount for purple tags that day. I think it was 20% off, so ~$6.39.

I was looking for a 2-cup model but all that had was 3-cup and I have had good service from Aroma cookers in my previously-housed life. Label-rated 300w but the kill-a-watt says it pulls 271w while cooking and 34.5w when warming.

the test

normal stuff:

1c long grain white rice
2c water

rinse rice
cook with water in rice cooker :-)

Excellent rice, as I’ve learned to expect from rice cookers. The boil was unexpected vigorous (near-violent); I was surprised until I remembered atmospheric pressure at 10k’ is greatly reduced.

I might add another TBS of water at elevation to account for the quicker boil.

bonus bread run

I started a batch of no-knead bread yesterday around noon. I upped the water portion a bit to see if I liked it, and added some walnut pieces and black pepper.

I’d been intending to raise/bake in a dogbowl insert to see if I could get a more loaf-like output. Here it is mixed and thrown in the dogbowl:

I’ve been shooting for 18-hr rises, but by bedtime the dough was even with the dogbowl and I was afraid it might climb out. I needn’t have worried; it “punched down” by itself overnight. Collapse? Contraction from overnight chill (upper 40s)? Dunno, but it makes me wonder if I shouldn’nt be baking at 8hrs instead of 18.

By 10am there was enough excess power to run the crock on HI. I gave it 2.5hrs instead of 2 hrs because of the increased water and being in the bowl insert.

I must be learning because I lifted it out without destroying the parchment paper:

The resulting loaf is ~2.5” tall instead of 2” when baked without the bowl. I like the shape.

As seen in the pic it is 3” tall, but tht’s just the thin ridges stuck to the sides from when it rose so high last night.

I ate half of the 1lb loaf with butter for my lunch.

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