Mastering Rice -- Give Up, And Try A Fool-Proof Rice Cooker

WHY WOULD ANYBODY BUY A rice cooker anyway?

Cooking rice right is a hot topic. Electric rice cookers are presently hot items.

Everybody agrees with the combination of a certain amount of the grain boiled or steamed or simmered in a certain amount of liquid - usually water - for a certain (or uncertain) amount of time, but beyond that, nobody agrees on the particulars.

Which is why electric or electronic rice cookers are selling these days like, um, hot cakes.

For all of my lengthening career as a cook, food writer and journalist, I have until this week resisted all impulses to buy an electric rice cooker. I have been steadfast in this, despite the unnerving fact that so many of my Asian-American friends (most of whom are accomplished cooks) use them regularly, if not exclusively.

Why? Because years ago, I tasted a bowlful of a Japanese-style rice at the very first Toshi's Teriyaki that opened in Seattle - and that bowl of rice was superb. It was so perfect in texture and taste, moisture and degree of culinary fluff, that I worried about it for days afterwards.

Finally, I called the cook and asked if I could come back to his kitchen and watch him cook. Gracefully (thankfully), he said yes. I didn't care that much about how he marinaded his cubes of beef and chicken or how skillfully he grilled them. All I really wanted to know was how he cooked rice - and what kind it was.

The rice, he said, was an ordinary - but good - brand of commercially available California-grown medium grain rice. No great secret there.

You have to wash it in cool water, he said, about three rinsings to remove excess starch and until the rinse water runs clear.

Then you put it in a good-sized, heavy pot (his was cast aluminum) with a tight-fitting lid and fill it with water until the surface of the rice is covered with about one knuckle's depth of water.

Yes, yes?

"And then," he said, "you have to know how to make rice."

So I spent the next 15 years in that dedicated, uncertain but increasingly smug pursuit. A purist in search of a) competence if not b) mastery.

I have experimented with different rices (there are 1,200 strains on earth), different liquids (a little water, a splash of chicken stock, a dab of butter?) and a bunch of different pots. I never found THE perfect rice pot. Although the small Scan Pan with a tight-fitting glass lid came close. (Make sure you don't get the one with the pouring spout - the steam escapes.)

People who used rice cookers, I kept hearing, didn't trouble themselves with any of that.

"My mother gave me my rice cooker," said one female colleague, "when I went away to college."

"That was 25 years ago," chimed in her husband.

"And I still have it," she said.

"But do you still use it?" I asked.

"At least once or twice a week," she said.

"I hate appliances," volunteered the spouse. "But I have never seen any appliance work better. It does what it is supposed to do - make absolutely perfect rice - every time."

Her rice cooker was one of the first on the market, a National Rice-O-Mat, made by Panasonic. It had no frills whatsoever. Not even a keep-warm device, which, she said, might be a worthwhile accessory.

Hmmmmm, I said. Are they expensive?

Not really.

An hour later, I was calling the usual round-up of cookware shops. Feeling oddly perfidious.

"Only about forty bucks?" I said over the phone to the store clerk in the International District. Weakening.

Who buys rice cookers?

Certainly not just Asians, said a clerk at Mr. J Kitchen Gourmet in Bellevue:

"A lot of young people who are just getting into vegetarianism, but a whole variety of other people as well," said Yvonne Grosjean. "Couples seem to buy the five-cup size - that's the one size we have trouble keeping in stock. Larger families buy the eight or 10-cup size.

"They are very popular for wedding and shower gifts," she said. "Not just young people, or old people, or vegetarians or food nuts."

And why was this money-waving diversity lining up to purchase a high-tech, narrowly focused stew pot?

"Because it makes foolproof rice," she concluded.

Mr. J carries the Zojirushi brand cookers (from $39.96 to $69.95), and as the clerk had alluded, they were out of the two most popular sizes; both were on order.

The Uwajimaya store in the International District, 519 Sixth Ave. S., on a weekend morning is a remarkable scene. The shelves are crammed with every imaginable Asian import, from noodles to sake, from ceramic charcoal grills to rice cookers.

This is a store where customers (mostly Asian, but not exclusively) come not only to shop but to promenade. On Saturdays and Sundays, its aisles are jammed and so is the parking lot.

When I got to the rice cookers, three other shoppers were there before me, hefting boxes, poking pots. I spotted a 5-cup National ($48), snaked an arm through the crowd like a cobra, grabbed it, paid for it and fled.

It's a simple, straightforward machine - an aluminum bucket inside another bucket. The outer one is white enamel and equipped with a heating element inside, a switch on the outside and a lid on top.

The instructions that come with it are minimal - very. The booklet, written in about 14 languages, tells you to wash the rice, place it in the inside cooker with a specified amount of water for each cup of rice you intend to cook, soak it for a half hour, and hit the switch.

When it's done, the switch pops up, the rice warmer clicks on (it will keep the rice warm for up to five hours) and you let the rice "rest" for at least 15 minutes.

Guess what?

It worked. Totally, perfectly, completely.

All of the mystery, all of the mastery, was gone. I was vaguely disappointed.

I really wonder how much I will use it. It makes a minimum of two cups of raw rice at a time. For large groups, I'll probably take it out fairly often. When cooking a small amount for myself or a friend, probably not much.

Maybe when I'm feeling technologically insecure.

(Copyright 1993, John Hinterberger. All rights reserved.)

John Hinterberger's food columns and restaurant reviews appear Sundays in Pacific and Fridays in Tempo. Bo Hok Cline is a Seattle Times news artist.