I love using my Oster™ rice cooker to make rice. It’s fantasticly easy, just put in rice and water, cover and leave it alone, and not having to use butter or margarine cuts down on fat and calories. There’s just one thing I don’t like about it. It always forms a skin on the bottom. Some types of rice are worse than others, and sometimes we just eat it, but sometimes I have to throw the bottom layer away. Suggestions, anybody?
If you mean that there is a layer of rice that covers the bottom, overcooked or burnt, it sounds like a problem with the device. Our Panasonic does not do that.
If you mean that there is a slight film of rice “dust” on the bottom, the solution is generally to rinse the rice a couple of times before putting it in the cooker. (This, of course, means that the cooker is no longer “work free,” but those seem to be the choices open to you. If washed immediately, (even if just rinsed with a mild scouring pad), the film comes off with no trouble. (Letting it sit overnight generally means that it needs to either be soaked or scoured.)
If you’re talking about the crunchy crust that forms on the bottom of the rice, you should send it to me (but not till after the end of Passover, tomorrow at sunset). Rice crust… mmmmm…
If it’s a crust that sticks to the bottom of the rice cooker, you should get a nonstick one. I used to have a rice cooker with a metal pan, and I almost never used it, because it was such a pain to clean. I now have a nonstick one, use it a lot, and love it.
I have a rice cooker that always burns the bottom as well – and I think it’s an Oster. It’s a relatively small one, and I always need to scrub it like crazy when I’m done, since it is not non-stick.
Heh, it was a wedding gift for two friends of mine, and they gave it to me when they got divorced! I was the only one who came out ahead in that deal!
I’m not positive about this, but I believe that’s caused by the starch. Try rinsing the rice first before cooking it. I think it will cause the film to stop forming. Again, I could be wrong, but it’s worth a shot.
It does help a lot to rinse the rice before cooking.
The cooker itself makes a difference as well. I used to have a Panasonic cooker that was purchased in Japan and it never burned the rice until it burned itself up. A cheapie from Kmart was terrible. A not cheapie from Bed Bath and Beyond was just OK, but still not great. I finally broke down and bought a Zojirushi. It browns the very bottom of the rice ever so barely, but nothing like the cheapies did.
The rice alo probably makes a difference. I’m just using plain Calrose rice - I’ve not been adventurous enough to try other varieties.
What the others said.
The variety and brand of rice is important too. Some brands put a whitener in the rice. Some varieties chafe more than others. Wash it all off; I typically rinse rice twice (say that three times fast). I also use brown rice, which tends to have better structural integrity.
My cooker is a Cuckoo pressure cooker.
It’s either broken or cheap. There should not be a crust of burnt rice on the bottom. The only thing you should find in the bottom of the pot is a thin, transparent layer of glue-like starch that is easily washed out.
I’ve got a small Zojurushi rice cooker and I never get a crust.
Are you stirring the water and rice before you turn the cooker on? Giving it a stirring mid-cycle may help also.
Most rice cookers use the temperature of the rice pot bottom, as the water evaporates off or is absorbed by the rice, to tell it when to turn off. The more expensive ones use other types of sensors.
I had this problem because I unthinkingly translated part of my stove-top rice-cooking technique to the rice-cooker. (ie; using two parts water to one part rice.)
It didn’t occur to me that the little cup and the water level indicators didn’t conform to that ratio, because I “knew” what ratio was needed to get the rice the way I like it. Of course, a rice cooker vents out a lot more water as steam than rice steamed in a sealed pot does – so I kept getting cheesed off when stuff burnt to the bottom. :smack:
Thanks for all the tips! On a related note, why are you not supposed to rinse Basmati rice? It instructs you not to on the front of the bag. The worst result I’ve had was with saffron rice.
I always grease my rice cooker with a little bit of crisco (just the bottom) before using it. Also, I think I got the overcooked rice on the bottom from cooking less rice that the cooker was designed for holding.
XaMcQ- are you using some sort of fortified rice? Basmati is much nicer if it’s rinsed.
I always rinse or soak Basmati rice (I don’t use any other variety, ever- they all taste nasty after you get used to Basmati), and although I don’t use a rice cooker, I’ve found that I get much fluffier rice if I remove some of the starch first.
In fact- I’ve just checked my packet of Basmati rice- it says to pre-soak the rice for 30 minutes.
A related question, not worth its own thread. Can you cook brown rice in a regular rice cooker, or do you need one of those fancy $150 fuzzy logic cookers with a brown rice setting?
Our Panasonic’s instructions called for a ratio of 1 1/3 portion of water to one portion of rice. When we cooked brown rice that way, it was too dry and tended to bake. However, upping the proportion to 1 1/2 water to 1 rice, the rice came out fine.
I’m not aware of any prohibition against washing it. There are just some kinds of rice that need washing for various reasons (starch or packing talc content) and some that don’t need it.
Brown rice cooks just fine in a regular cooker, you just have to get the water ratio right.
When I had a cheapy rice cooker, I used to get the crust unless I gave the bottom a quick spray with Pam. Now I have one of those super fancy rice cookers and every single grain of rice of perfect every time. Totally worth the money. (and it doesn’t actually have a brown rice setting but cooks brown rice perfectly as well as my favorite breakfast, steel cut oats)
What am I reading in this thread? Pam? Crisco? Burnt rice bottoms? Burnt rice bottoms being yummy? Where’s that shakes head smiley?
If you’re burning rice at the bottom or if you’re putting butter, pam, whathaveyou, then you’re rice cooker is a piece of garbage and should be thrown out. There are other good rice cookers out there, but for guaranteed great rice every time, use a Zojirushi. Problem solved. Very little measuring, very little prep time.
Calrose = shit rice, so does Botan, Riceland, and maybe Dynasty; however, I will gladly use that rice any day instead of even more shittier rice brands such as: Crappy Minute Rice, Uncle Ben’s Crap, and >shudder< Success Rice. If you’re rice doesn’t come in a minimum 25 lb burlap sack, it probably isn’t worth giving to your dog. Basmanti tops all, then Jasmine, then Calrose and the others.
Sorry, I get on a rant about rice all the time, don’t ask. So let me clarify: Calrose is pretty good, but it doesn’t keep. Dynasty jasmine tastes different from the jasmine stuff I get from Japan. However, I stand by my comments about those crap-ass rice cookers.
We have a Zojirushi cooker - the standard variety, not fuzzy-logic. We do get a crust on the bottom but only with generic brown rice. It’s just a half-inch of chewy, unpalatable stuff. I believe we had better luck with a fancier brown rice (brown basmati, for example). Anything else, even cheapo store-brand white rice, and there’s no crust.
This machine has ruined me for Minute Rice, which was a staple in my household growing up. Even if I had to deal with the crust on every batch, it’d still be worth it.