The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook: 250 No-Fail Recipes for Pilafs, Risottos, Polenta, Chilis, Soups, Porridges, Puddings, and More, from Start to Finish in Your Rice Cooker: Amazon.ca: Beth Hensperger: Books

Product Description

From Amazon.com

Beth Hensperger and Julie Kaufmann's The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook offers 250 timesaving, convenient, and healthy recipes for making everything from simple white rice to full-course meals. This cookbook proves the rice cooker--which tends to have a bad rap as a never-opened or oft-neglected wedding gift--can be surprisingly versatile: not only does it prepare your rice, it can be used for every dinner course--salad, soup, vegetable, entree, and even dessert.

There is a complete buying and cooking guide for the many rice varieties, as well as other whole grains such as barley, millet, wheat berry, and quinoa. Many of the recipes provide convenient alternative cooking methods for traditional dishes like Italian risottos (the Italian Sausage Risotto is wonderful). Hensperger and Kaufmann show the rice cooker can also work miracles for hot breakfast cereals and porridges with such recipes as Hot Fruited Oatmeal. Delightful main courses include Steamed Ginger Salmon and Asparagus in Black Bean Sauce, and the meal is done almost exclusively within the rice cooker for simple preparation and cleanup. The dessert section has many ideas beyond the expected Old-Fashioned Rice Pudding--the Poached Pears with Grand Marnier Custard Sauce is one elegant and sophisticated example. Both authors of this cookbook are seasoned food writers and this combined effort gives tasty, easy, and healthy recipes that will motivate you to use what has been, until now, an underutilized appliance. --Teresa Simanton

From Library Journal

Hensperger is well known as the author of a dozen or so books on bread. Here, she and Kaufmann, food editor of the San Jose Mercury News, show just how versatile a simple rice cooker can be. They start with rice, of course, providing an excellent guide to the numerous varieties now available and cooking directions. Included are recipes for dozens of rice dishes from risotto to sushi and a chapter on other grains. There are also recipes that use the cooker to steam vegetables, main dishes, dim sum, and tamales, and readers will find a good assortment of desserts, from silky custards to creamy puddings. Other books, such as Stephanie Lyness's Cooking with Steam (o.p.), have focused on various aspects of "steam cuisine," but Hensperger and Kaufmann's is far more ambitious and wide-ranging. For most collections.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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4.8 out of 5 stars (20 customer reviews)

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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Comprehensive and readable, Jan 20 2003

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Purple Shiny (Minneapolis, MN United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook: 250 No-Fail Recipes for Pilafs, Risottos, Polenta, Chilis, Soups, Porridges, Puddings, and More, from Start to Finish in Your Rice Cooker (Hardcover)

I have made several of the recipes in this book and continue to be extremely impressed. So many times, books that are centered around a specific appliance are too complicated and show-offy - they seem to forget that the appliance is supposed to make life easier and write recipes that use too many ingredients (several of them unrecognizable) and too many steps. My crock pot cookbook (and my crock pot, for that matter) remain unused as a result.

This cookbook doesn't do this. Many of the recipes are quite simple, and if esoteric ingredients are called for they are explained and described and are the focal point of the recipe. More than any other cookbook, this book gave me a food education as well. I learned an incredible amount about rice and about a variety of cultural adaptations of rice without feeling like a captive audience.

Finally, this book is extremely well organized and easy to understand and follow. The shopping section at the end with internet sources to purchase ususual rices, spices, and vegetables was an unexpected treat. I am recommending rice cookers highly, and in the same breath, I make sure to recommend this book. In fact, the next wedding I go to, the bride and groom get a rice cooker and this cookbook. It's that good.

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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Just Plain Comprehensive, Oct 6 2002

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"slow_day" (Baltimore, MD) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook: 250 No-Fail Recipes for Pilafs, Risottos, Polenta, Chilis, Soups, Porridges, Puddings, and More, from Start to Finish in Your Rice Cooker (Hardcover)

I got this book as a gift after debating whether to buy it for about six months. I have a fuzzy logic cooker and wasn't sure if the recipes in the book were for regular rice cookers or the fuzzy logic type. Turns out its for all kinds of rice cookers. In fact the book basically is a reference guide to rice, rice cookers, rice recipes and anything else eatable the authors attempted to cook in the appliance. The only thing that fuzzy logic cookers get left out of is steamed items. Each recipe tells you if it is appropriate for the rice cooker you have. Most of the recipes seem to work for all cookers.

Comprehensive is the word that came to mind the first time I sat down with this cook book. The first section deals with rice cookers and describes each kind in detail and how to use it. That takes 16 pages. Then they move on to every type of rice you are might encounter in the whole rice loving world. That's another 16 pages. Included in that section is a page devoted to how to make packaged rice mixes in the cooker; things like rice-a-roni or some of the new orleans red beans and rice mixes or casbah brand.

The recipes start appearing on page 34 and one thing to know is that THERE ARE NO ILLUSTRATIONS. The recipes are separated into chapters like pilafs, risottos, deserts, and other unlikely items, like little meals, dim sum and grains. What is convenient is that at the start of each chapter is a little table of contents for that chapter listing the name and page of each recipe. What a great idea. In each chapter if there is any step of a recipe that can't be done in a cooker that gets its own little recipe. The recipes are laid out well; the ingredients are listed in a different color type than the directions.

There are some things they want you to do that seem weird, like melting butter and sauteing things in the cooker using the quick cook cycle with the lid open. I haven't tried that yet. One day, but not today. Making different breakfast oatmeals and porridges seems like high adventure to me.

There are lots of side items about rice or other ingredients, including a list of useful items found in asian markets. Things like that are printed on different colored paper. Even a amall history of rice.

...

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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars We use this cookbook at least 3 times a week (usually more), Nov 20 2002

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K. Corn "reviewer" (midwest, United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook: 250 No-Fail Recipes for Pilafs, Risottos, Polenta, Chilis, Soups, Porridges, Puddings, and More, from Start to Finish in Your Rice Cooker (Hardcover)

I bought a rice cooker, learned the basics of preparing rice and then wanted to expand my skills. So I bought a few cookbooks but this is the ONLY one that has recipes my whole family loves, so much so that we use it at least 3-5 times a week and never feel like we're eating the same thing.
The recipes aren't just for rice but for all sorts of grains and vegetables and fruits as well. In fact, I'm ready to throw out my crockpot because the meals prepared in the rice cooker are much better, don't have that overcooked, stewed taste you can get with a crockpot and have all the convenience and ease that I need with my busy schedule. The directions are clear and the recipes range from the simple (plain cooked grains) to the more complex (rice with coconut and currants... or grits with cheese and spices )
The ultimate test of a good cookbook, of course, is getting compliments and raves about the food. Every time I've made a recipe from this book, the food has been devoured quickly. We rarely have leftovers and my son's friends even make a point of looking in the kitchen to see if the rice cooker is turned on ( yes, the recipes in this cookbook are THAT good).

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Most recent customer reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars A good reference for the neophyte
As someone who was not at all familiar with the rice cooker as an appliance, I found this book very useful. Read more

Published 13 months ago by Marnie McGrath

5.0 out of 5 stars Rice and sooo much more
I stumbled upon this book in the library and found myself flipping through it up for several days - there are so many good recipies that I had to buy it. Read more

Published on Feb 27 2007 by a customer