I don’t know whether they all belong here but let’s try.
Help me cook rice. I have a rice cooker but it seems that it only works if you put the right amount of rice to the right amount of water. Some people say 2:1 but the little cups that came with the cooker are closer to 1.5 to 1. The cooker shuts off when the water is all absorbed. If I use too much water it is mushy and too little it is crunchy. Usually what I get is slightly burned on the bottom and slimy on the top, or falling apart on the outside but still crunchy inside. I have tried a regular pot but again, everybody had different ratios. Some say cover the rice to the first knuckle but wouldn’t the amount of water then vary depending on whether you have a wide shallow pot ( more surface area= more water) or a taller narrow pot (less surface area= less water). Don’t even get me started on the type of rice, whether to rinse it, how many times to rinse it, whether to let it sit before fluffing etc.
I also cannot cook mushrooms. I always end up with them floating in a ton of water. Are you supposed to just boil off all the liquid? Do you drain the liquid? Am I cooking them too long? It seems they barely get warm before they release all their water (and this is even with just wiping them clean and not washing)
I do not understand my calphalon pot. It is a 3 quart heavy black-colored pot with a metal handle. Is it supposed to be non-stick? I have treated it like a non-stick pan, avoiding scrubbing heavily or using metal utensils, but it still seems like the inner coating is coming off and I get little black flakes in my food. Am I cleaning it too hard or not getting it clean enough. Is it oven-safe? (I have avoided the oven since I thought it was some higher-end type of non-stick).
I had somebody do some cleaning in my house and they apparently moved my gas range out from the wall about 4 inches. It is now also unstable in that it rocks if you lean on one corner. I tried to see if it would slip back into place but it won’t without a great deal of effort. Do I run a risk of disconnecting the gas and blowing up my house if I shove it back into place? How do I get it to stop rocking? Do I have to hire an appliance repairman to fix this? Am I limited to microwave cooking from now on?
I seriously feel like an idiot. I used to be able to cook. I remember making soufflés as a teenager. What happened?
1: Are you using the right kind of rice? I get the best results with “Calrose” rice in my cooker. The comment that you have to use the right amount of rice and the right amount of water is amusing. “Fuzzy logic” cookers have a wider range of tolerance, but generally, yes, it helps to follow the directions that came with the appliance. If I use two scoops (the scoop came with the rice cooker) then I fill the pot with water to the “2” line on the “White rice” side.
2: No idea. I’ve always used mushrooms as part of a dish. Never cooked them on their own.
4: They probably didn’t get the range’s back foot under the anti-tip bracket. It’s usually on the left side and they can be a bit of a tussle to re-engage. Try tilting the range forward just a little while you slide it back. With any luck, that will let things line up. As long as you don’t put a bad kink in the line, the gas should be OK. Just to be safe, do you know where and how to shut off the gas to your home? Really though, gas lines are fairly durable.
Perfect rice: One cup rice, two cups water (or whatever ratio you need for the eventual amount.) Plus a little butter and salt. Like this.Increase water by a little for brown rice.
Boiled mushrooms are horrible, slimy little spawns of Satan. Saute or fry them, always.
No clue. But maybe you need to get your money back if the coating is coming off already.
You need a more competent cleaning person. But as long as the gas fittings are tight you’re fine to move it back. Gas leaks are designed to be stinky so if you smell gas, call your utility company. But really, it is probably not a big deal. Probably unstable because not that many houses are actually very square and level.
I just want to cook them a little to add them to something, like a sauce. The more they cook the more water they release. I have to boil them to death to cook until all the liquid is gone and then I have mushroom leather. For example, if I want to make a risotto, I can sauté onions and then the rice without a problem. But if I want mushroom risotto, and I add in the mushrooms with the onions, then I have to remove them and dry the pot and re-add oil to cook the risotto then add them back. Otherwise, I have too much moisture. (BTW-I can make risotto, because I can just add liquid until it’s done, unlike regular rice which never ever works).
I AM sautéing them. I put a little oil or butter into a pan and add mushrooms and try to cook them. However, it is impossible to saute when as soon as the heat hits them they release all their water and now you are essentially boiling or steaming them.
You may be able to get the bottom “drawer” (where I keep the cookie sheets) off if you want to take a look around before you scoot it back. Pull drawer forward till it stops, tilt the front up and pull forward some more. Reverse to reseat. Sitting on the floor in front of the stove and placing each heel on a corresponding corner just off the floor gives a good steady push.
This is normal. The issue is you’re overcrowding the pan. Do a small batch at a time and when the mushrooms release their liquid it will quickly evaporate. Once the liquid is gone you can get a little color on the 'shrooms if you like (I do).
Work in small batches.
I don’t know if this will work for mushrooms (as I have yet to try cooking them), but when other foods let out water, I’ll drain them, then continue cooking. It’s the only way I can get some meats to brown, for example. If it really happens that quickly, try cooking them separately until the water comes out, drain them, and then add to whatever else you are cooking.
Guides about how to saute mushrooms seem to indicate that the water should be low enough that it will evaporate in a few minutes. So maybe you’re cooking too high and/or not waiting long enough.
As for rice, unless you like clumpy, sticky rice, the common 2 to 1 ratio is too high. That’s why rice cookers give you altered cups to use. I personally avoid the rice cooker and just cook to the hand, where you choose any amount of rice, in a pot, rinse the rice 3 times, and then fill up the water to cover one knuckle above. I really like how this rice turns out, and it’s nice not to have to clean up two different measuring cups.
Rice: One cup of rice and two cups of water. I put the cold water and the rice into a pot and add a tablespoon of butter. (Just cut off the stick; not melted or anything.) Bring the water to the boil, stirring to keep the rice from sticking and to mix in the butter. I let it go to a roiling boil, then cover the pot and remove it from the element. I use Calphalon stainless steel Tri-Ply pots, so they retain heat well. Leave it alone for 20 minutes, then fluff the rice with a fork.
Mushrooms: Sauté them in butter or olive oil with a little salt. Add minced garlic if you want to. Liquid will be released from the mushrooms, but will boil off in a few minutes.
Calphalon pot: I assume by ‘black’ you mean the anodised-looking dark grey coating. I’ve found this to be very durable. One of my non-stick Calphalon frying pans ($50 minus the 20% coupon from Bed Bath & Beyond for a two pan set) lost some of its non-stick coating. I suspect the SO burned it. It is important not to over-heat your pans. There is a learning curve to the Tri-Ply stainless steel pans (which clean up very nicely, BTW – use Barkeeper’s Friend if you must) and this applies to the good non-stick pans as well. Don’t get them too hot.
Speaking of non-stick pans, find the really cheap ones for omelettes. The coating isn’t very durable, but it’s very smooth. Perfect for omelettes. Again, don’t over-heat.
Scanning to get your last question, I see someone already mentioned the anti-tip bracket. My stove came out of its bracket, and I haven’t put it back in. It isn’t tippy, so I don’t care. I don’t have kids, so no one is going to tip the stove over.
Can’t add much - shrooms always give off a bunch of liquid when you saute them. You just keep sauteeing until it’s gone.
As far as your other questions, no clue. I cook rice in a pot, not in a rice cooker. I don’t have any Calphalon (but black flakes sound bad.) And no clue on your stove, I’d probably be perplexed on that one as well.
Regarding the range not being stable. If you have a tile floor, they may not have pushed it back all the way so one of the front feet might still be on the tile instead of on the subfloor (there’s probably no tile under the stove). It’s also possible that when they pushed it back something ended up under one of the feet, whether it’s a chunk of scrap wood from the cabinet builders, a shim from whoever installed it, a spoon you didn’t know was under there, one time I even saw the top ply of the plywood peel back and flip over making a dishwasher rock. Another culprit is one of the feet coming off.
If the stove has a drawer at the bottom, pull it out as far as it goes (or all the way out) and make sure all the feet look okay. All the feet are screwed in where they belong, no foreign objects under any of them, none of them up on the tile/linoleum/hardwood or if one of them is higher and there’s a shim nearby, it might belong under it.
As far as disconnecting the gas, it is possible to loosen it enough to leak by pulling the stove out and pushing it back too many times, but within an hour or so you’ll notice the smell in the kitchen. If you had it professionally hooked up, it’s not that likely though since the connections are were probably made very tight and there should be a flexible hose going from the floor to the stove. Either way, if you start by pulling the drawer you can probably see what’s going on without moving the entire unit.
Rice: 2:1 water to rice ratio. For each cup of uncooked rice, add a teaspoon of butter [actual butter, comes from cows, not margarine or spread or whatever else some folks mistakenly call butter] and a dash of salt. Put water, butter, and salt in pan, bring to vigorous boil, add rice, bring back to vigorous boil, let boil 20-30 seconds, reduce heat to low simmer. Simmer thusly for 20 minutes, remove from heat. I prefer jasmine rice, buy it in big bags at African market or Costco – price at most groceries is ridiculous.
Mushrooms: Slice to desired thickness, saute with ¼-½ stick of butter per 8 oz. mushrooms at medium heat. Stir every few minutes, sprinkle with salt after about 10 minutes. Continue sauteing until all water is gone, leaving mushrooms in what is essentially clarified butter, and they take on a nice brown color. If you’re trying to saute whole mushrooms, I don’t know what to tell you. Too little contact with pan, too little surface area to absorb butter – I’ve never done it. Slice them puppies!
The rice ‘recipe’ I’ve always used came from an old Chinese cookbook and works quite well. The biggest plus is that there is no measuring. It goes like this:
Wash rice thoroughly
Fill saucepan half full of water and bring to a boil
Add 1 teaspoon of vinegar (I usually don’t do this) and the rice
Cook uncovered over medium heat for 15 to 18 minutes, stirring occasionally
Drain in sieve and rinse under hot water to separate grains.
The bonus in doing it this way is that the grains don’t stick together and can be used to make really good fried rice.
Rice: If you like “plain” rice, try Zatarain’s Parboiled. It comes in a plastic bag (not the boxed dirty rice or whatever mix). It’s pretty foolproof and has a nice nutty flavor. I just sort of eyeball the measurements…dump some in the saucepan, add water so the total volume is a bit more than doubled, plus a few shakes of salt, sometimes a lump of butter. Put on the stove till it boils, then lower the temp and put a lid on. Fluff it when it looks almost done. This is probably doing it all wrong, but it comes out fine for me and the family. And I have a long history of destroying rice…
Mushrooms: What everyone else said, pretty much. Fairly high heat, be generous with the sauteeing fat. I don’t salt till afterwards, and I don’t wash them unless they look disgusting. Onions give off a lot of water, so don’t cook them simultaneously if that bothers you.
Can’t help further with the pot, but can you get help pushing your stove back? I assume that if it was pulled out, it’s open to the room on two sides and somebody can tug on the back while the other person nudges the front, but I don’t know. The gas hookup should be ok.
Yeah, I used to try to cook rice the normal way and got way too sick of cleaning burnt rice off the bottoms of pans. Now I cook it as if it were pasta and it turns out great every time.
Thanks for all the help. So far it seems that this is my solution:
Rice-nobody makes it the same way. Add rice to cold water, add to already boiling water, rinse first, don’t rinse, use extra water then drain, use the one knuckle technique (seriously, how can this logically work?) use parboiled rice, use long-grain rice etc. I concede defeat.
Mushrooms-I think I am crowding the pan. I like a lot of mushrooms. I guess I have to do them in small batches.
Calphalon-I think I definitely have the anodized type listed above. Am I heating it too hot? How can you cook without a hot pan? I still don’t know if it’s dangerous without the coating. Somebody actually gave me a set. I have the 2 quart one also but that is pristine and I am afraid to use it and ruin the coating. If it is the 3-ply anodized, can they go in the oven or dishwasher? (FWIW- I DO have a dedicated omelet pan. It is pristine and nothing goes in it but eggs).
Stove-the problem here is that it fits into a cut in the counter so that there is about an inch clearance on either side so I can’t look behind it or really see to either side. The front legs are resting on my hardwood floor and the back is on the plywood but it looks like somebody just pulled it forward a few inches. I know that there is at least one fork that dropped down the crack between the stove and counter that I haven’t been able to reach and probably a few dozen cat toys. I can’t shove it straight back and no way can I reach the back legs to adjust them. Who would I even call to help me? The best thing might be to actually pull the entire thing out, retrieve the fork and cat toys and clean and then replace it, because as far as I can see with a flashlight, there is all kinds of crap back there.
I’d guess that only one of the back legs is on the plywood now. If the stove has a drawer, try pulling it all the way out. That usually gives access to what’s underneath the stove. You can probably get all the stuff that’s under it, fix the plywood and figure out why you can’t push it back the rest of the way all without pulling it out again.
There’s at least two threads on rice and rice-cookers. Find & read them – they’re extremely extensive and will help you a lot. Short answer: Make sure you let the rice soak in the water for about 3 hours before turning on the heat.
If the cleaning crew moved the stove and now it’s wobbly, pushing it back probably won’t hurt. If an appliance installer type of person moved the stove and now it’s wobbly, said person may have added something that could break when pushing it back. All such appliances have little feet on threaded bolts that connect to welded nuts so that you can twist the feet and have them extend or retract a bit, thereby stabilizing the stove. You may need to pull off a panel (or two) to get at the adjustment points; they’re hidden away because they’re just not very pretty.