The Everyday Rice Cooker

June 15, 2015

Appliance cookbooks, such as Michele Scicolone's The Italian Slow Cooker and Kathy Strahs's The Ultimate Panini Press Cookbook, continue to grow in popularity and specificity. Phillips (The Easy Pressure Cooker Cookbook) takes on the electric rice cooker, using it to turn out nonrice basics (e.g., polenta, quinoa, applesauce) and complex dishes such as chicken miso soup with oyster mushrooms and greens, baby artichoke farro pilaf, and Cajun salmon with dirty rice and fruit salsa. Her methods, which range from sauteing aromatics in the cooker to inserting a steamer basket to hold proteins over broths and grains, will save on cleanup, but they're not always convenient. Some recipes ask readers to check in on a dish more than once during a cooking cycle, or to interrupt a cycle to switch the machine to a different setting. VERDICT Phillips's latest successfully expands on uses for the rice cooker but will frustrate readers who prefer to "set it and forget it."

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