RC: Egg Drop Soup

I took a bit of a break over the summer, because, well, I wasn't living in a dorm. Even though some of my experimenting could have been done in a dorm room, it just didn't seem right. But now I'm back in school and what I do best: figuring out how to eat/cook what you want in a dorm room!

Today I made Chinese Egg Drop Soup in a rice cooker. It's a very straightforward thing to make, and it was really easy to do in the rice cooker. I started with one of these packets:


Dry stuff came out - I added a few cups of water and turned the rice cooker on. I just followed the directions on the package, and after it was boiling and all mixed up, I blended an egg (with a fork in a cup, I might add), and then stirred the egg in.

This soup smelled bad and tasted kind of bad, and then I added the egg and miraculously, both improved. It was also fun stirring the egg, because I could see how far the bits of a single egg could go in hot liquid before they cooked. You almost have to try making this just for the experience.



Edit: http://chinesefood.about.com/library/weekly/aa090701a.htm
This article makes it seem really complicated to pour in the egg. However, it worked just fine for me on the first try. Beginner's luck? A perfect mix? Could it be that Egg Drop Soup is actually /easier/ to make in a rice cooker?

RC: Teriyaki Chicken Noodle

This was quick, easy, and rather lazy. I'll admit it. :) It's important to remember that you don't have to have the time or energy to create a full meal from scratch in order to 'cook' - anything you add or change, no matter how small, has the potential to make the finished product healthier or more delicious.

In this case I started with a canned soup - Teriyaki Chicken Noodle. I added a can of carrots (including juice), a little soy sauce and some extra noodles I had lying around. Even just the carrots would have added a lot to the soup, though, so you don't have to have any special noodles or anything.

RC: Easter Eggs in the Dorm

We employed two rice cookers to hard boil 15 eggs. We brought the water to a boil, and then switched the setting to 'keep warm' for about 10 minutes. (I have read that you shouldn't put eggs into hot water immediately, or they will crack, so we started with warm tap water.) Six eggs fit comfortably in each rice cooker, so we had to make them in three batches, but our rice cookers are small and cheap.


We died the eggs with PAAS easter egg dye and white vinegar. Afterwards we ate some of them. They weren't very easy to crack, but this probably had more to do with the fact that we didn't dunk them in cold water after boiling - instead we handled them for almost an hour, dyed them, etc. The consistancy was excellent. If I was exceedingly fond of boiled eggs I would do it in the rice cooker again anytime.

RC: Mushroom Rice with Chili and Honey

Emboldened by my good experiences with soup, I decided to try to cook mushrooms in my rice cooker. At this point I was still tied to the idea that you can cook other things in a rice cooker, but they have to be with rice. I moved past this silly idea later, but rice is delicious, so it didn't hurt anything. First I fried some uncooked rice along with mushrooms in some olive oil.


When the mushrooms looked done (they weren't white anymore), I added some chili pepper, stirred, and then added water to cook the rice. It looked delicious.



When the rice had finished cooking the final product looked like this, and tasted strongly of delicious mushrooms. I added some honey when I served it.

M: Easy Fudge

I didn't have high hopes for microwaveable fudge, but my roommate and I followed a simple recipe that called for 12 oz. of chocolate chips, 1 can of condensed milk, and a bit of vanilla to see how it would turn out.



It wasn't as good as the fudge my family makes at Christmas, which takes a full hour, but it was easily as good as what a cheap stovetop mix produces, and is the easiest method by far. The texture was fine, although we kept ours refrigerated so it was hard to cut. I did miss the marshmallow flavour of 'real' fudge, though.

HP: Rosemary Egg Rice

Over Spring Break I babysat for a family whose kitchen was being remodeled. I got hungry partway through the day and needed to cook something, but all they had was a microwave, a Hot Plate, and a Toaster. First I made some peanut butter toast, and when that wore off I decided it was time to use a Hot Plate for the first time. It was pretty straightforward, not unlike using a stovetop. I cooked some rice, and then I added some egg and semi-fried it with the moist rice, adding rosemary and a few other spices to the finished mixture - I did all of this in one pot, minimizing clean up. The result was nothing inspiring, and would probably have made a better side dish than lunch, but it was warm and satisfying.

RC: Chicken Tomato Noodle Soup

I had owned my Rice Cooker for quite a while when I first decided to try to make something other than rice in it. My first idea was to heat an instant Campbell's Soup, but I was a little freaked out by the fact that there was no information about doing so online, as surely there would be if such a thing were possible. Then I thought - the sides get hot, the bottom gets hot, if Campbell's soups are safe to eat raw, how bad could things get?



But, because I'm a hyper chef, I decided to make some rice while I was at it (chicken rice soup is good, right?) and to add some tomatoes. So first I cooked some rice the normal way, and when it was done I poured in a can of tomatoes.


Then I added the chicken noodle soup itself and cooked for a while. The end product had good flavour but was perhaps a bit too thick, and consequently a bit slimy. I would change some things if I made it again, but this goes down in history as my first soup made in a Rice Cooker.