— Victoria Mulligan

Um, I have owned a rice cooker for probably 15 years, um, and I didn't use it for probably the past seven years, but just moved it across the country with me, along with all my other cooking stuff. And just happened to use it last week, um, to make sushi rice. Uh, and as I got it out, I was like, wow, I should probably use this more. Um, but it's basically a great tool for, um, if you don't want to worry about looking over your pot, right? So I traditionally will make a rice and a pot just an open pot and then cover it, um, you know, and, uh, but that's typically how I make my rice. Um, even sushi rice for years. That's the way I did it as well. Um, but this week, um, having family in town and, uh, having my kids, uh, actually do the recipe with us and everything and just trying to get all the rest of the ingredients prepped for our sushi, um, was like, you know, let's just reuse the rice cooker. We've got it. We know exactly what, you know, texture, we need to be able to make it happen. And I had sushi rice, so we used it again and it's, it's a nice, you know, it's one of the nicer rice cookers. That's why I've kept it for so long. Um, and, uh, it worked out wonderfully. It se it like just came up the perfect texture for it for, and then I just season it afterward, of course for sushi rice. But, um, you know, I have friends that swear by them. In fact, uh, you know, I have a lot of friends that make their oatmeal in them as well. They'll actually do, um, you know, the, um, oh, I can't think of the name right now. The, it's the heavier cut on the oatmeal. Um, but they'll also just do a plain oatmeal as well too. Um, but yeah, so you can do other grains in it as well. Um, but quite honestly, um, I use a pot, you know, 99.8% of the time, um, instead of a rice cooker. Um, for all of the different things that I would cook in the rice cooker. Why? I think it's just 'cause it's easy. I don't have to like, worry about where I'm gonna store the thing as well. Like right now I store it in the basement pantry 'cause it's just one of those big, kind of awkward, you know, machines I don't really use as much as some of the other things that I have stored in my kitchen. Um, so that might be why I don't use it as much. But, uh, for me, just, uh, a place on the stove totally works. If you're doing a big, you know, event or like a Thanksgiving or something like that and you don't have another burner available, it's a great, you know, for something like that as well. But for the amount that I use mine, um, I probably wouldn't. Like if I didn't have one right now, I wouldn't go buy one. Um, so I think a pot works just as well, but again, having to keep an eye on it and just get the right technique just for you, because if you're making rice on a stove, that's like electric versus gas, very kind of different things you have to worry about and look at. So, um, but yeah, but a pot kind of makes it for me each time and it's just a classic and it works well for me.