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

by Beth Hensperger, Julie Kaufmann

The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook proves there's more to this popular appliance than a convenient way to cook a pot of rice. Complete with tips on buying and using a rice cooker, as well as selecting and preparing every kind of rice, grain, and dried bean, this book includes 250 recipes for everything from hot breakfast cereals and creamy desserts and puddings to classic vegetable, bean, and rice combinations and savory whole meal cuisines.

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking, Food, Reference, Nonfiction, Health, Food and Drink

368 pages, Paperback

First published December 12, 2001

About the author

Beth Hensperger is a passionate professional- and home- baker who is both extremely creative and extraordinarily prolific as an author and developer of quality recipes. Her training included a ten-year apprenticeship as a restaurant and hotel pastry chef as well as having her own custom wedding cake business and attending classes given by some of the top bakers in America. Though restaurant trained, she considers herself more of a dedicated home baker than a chef.
Beth’s writing career began when she was chosen as the Guest Cooking Instructor for the March 1985 issue of Bon Appetit. She is now the author of fifteen cookbooks, many of them best sellers. Her most recent books include: Williams Sonoma Breads (Weldon Owen), Bread For Breakfast (Ten Speed Press), and The Bread Lover's Bread Machine Cookbook (HCP). The Bread Bible (Chronicle Books) is the recipient of The James Beard Foundation Award for Baking in 2000. Beth's Basic Bread Book (Chronicle Books), a sequential text for the beginning home baker, published in the Fall of 1996, was chosen as one of the best baking books of the year by People Magazine. She has been nominated twice for the IACP Julia Child Cookbook Awards. Her books are all represented at the prestigious Culinary Collection of the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
When she isn't up to her elbows in flour, Beth is a monthly food columnist with the San Jose Mercury News "Baking By the Seasons". She is a regular contributor to Cooking Pleasures, Food & Wine, Shape Magazine, Bon Appétit, Veggie Life, and Pastry Art and Design Magazines.

Reviews

[Ivonne Rovira · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m 66 years old now, but I still remember my mother making rice in el Hitachi — a daily occurrence, as we were Cubans. Hitachi doesn’t even make rice cookers any more, but I still swear by the electric rice cooker.

The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook lives up to its name. Not only is it packed with recipes, the cookbook also has descriptions of and instructions for every type of rice, including lots I had never heard of. So, if you want to make plain Wehani rice, Riz Rouge or Kalijira brown rice — congratulations! — this cookbook will lay out the amount of water to use and whether or not you should pre-wash it. (Spoiler alert: Most of the time, author Beth Hensperger and Julie Kaufman think you should.)

The rice cooker isn’t just for rice anymore, and it hasn’t been for decades. In addition to some great rice side dishes (as well as side dishes featuring quinoa, millet, barley, farro, couscous, bulgur and more), The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook includes main dishes, such as Arroz con Pollo, Steamed Chicken Breasts with Warm Mango Sauce, potatoes with tarragon butter, Rice Cooker Paella, Shrimp and Grits, Italian Sausage Risotto, Barbecued Pork Buns (Char Siu Bau), and more. A super-deal with Kindle Unlimited, but definitely worth paying for.

[Snail in Danger (Sid) Nicolaides · Rating 2 out of 5]

I might have actually started this on the 22nd. Not sure. Anyway, this was a little disappointing. Mostly because the recipes are only for rice cookers of specific sizes, and there is no information about scaling down. The text implies that you shouldn't, and that makes me reluctant to experiment. (If your rice cooker isn't at least 4 cups, forget it. And many of these call for 6- or 10-cup machines.) There's a 2012 edition and I may check it out to see if it's been updated.

[Nags · Rating 3 out of 5]

I started looking out for rice cooker recipes and cookbooks when I bought (a way too expensive, I must add) Zojirushi induction rice cooker from Japan. Although there are a few out there, this book had the most number of positive reviews on Amazon so I chose it when I won a gift card in a contest from work. In a way, I am glad I didn't spend money on this but then I could have chosen another book I would've liked better.

Yes, the book has a variety of recipes you can cook in your rice cooker but none of the flavour combinations seem delicious to me. Could be my personal tastes and being hesitant to add cranberries to my rice. I was also hoping for a couple of cake recipe but there are either rice-based desserts or steamed ones, nothing I can make in my rice cooker pan directly.

That said, the authors had done a fair bit of research, that's for sure. They understand the way this machine works and have adapted all their recipes to that. I am glad the rice cooker I own is one of the main ones they've worked with so pretty much all the recipes are do-able.

Will try to update the review once I have actually tried something but couldn't resist an initial one after going through most of the book, and I mean in detail, not skimming.

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book goes WAY beyond rice cooking - encompassing all grains, all legumes, and even some desserts. The book encourages you to think of your rice cooker more as a one-pot meal maker than a means to a meal. With clear instructions and information on machine settings, it is possible to prepare the entire meal from start to finish. I also like how many of the recipes have suggestions for slightly different spices and flavors at the end. Example: Couscous with mushrooms, couscous with dried fruit and herbs, etc.

I've used the book for many kinds of rice dishes, as well as quinoa, farro, couscous, amaranth, and oatmeal. The legume soups and dishes are also particularly good - lentil soups, chili, rice/bean combos. There are many plant-based/veg meals in this book, and it is simple to substitute for the meats and stocks called for in some recipes as well.

If you want to add some variety to your dinner plans as well as some healthy whole grains, this books offers a great starting point.

[penny shima glanz · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very well researched book. It covers everything from the basic differences in various rice cookers to all those varieties of rice on the store shelves. I haven't yet cooked with this book as I'm waiting to see if a new rice cooker (which I've been begging for years for) magically appears on my counter in the next week or so. (If it doesn't I won't be disappointed and I'll work through these ideas with my vege/rice steamer). I wish I had this book when I had a basic on/off model as I learned various other things I could do with it. I like that it branches out past plain rices and into pilafs, risottos, porridge, and beyond into whole meals (even if those are things I'll never eat). I'm quite thankful that it isn't scratch and sniff because just reading the recipes made me hungry.

[Liaken · Rating 4 out of 5]

NOTE: This is not actually a gluten-free cookbook. It covers all kinds of grains---many of which are gluten-free.

We've used this book to make very good quinoa and amazing! polenta. The polenta! Ah! The polenta! Our rice cooker makes the creamiest polenta ever. If you have a good rice cooker and want to do more with it, this is the book for you. It's almost a textbook. Such a great resource.

[Glinda Harrison · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love my rice cooker and really had hoped that this would be something I could use frequently. I bought this right after I got the rice cooker and just really didn't think that it gave the basics well. I also didn't find that the recipes were well-suited to my family's tastes.

[Megan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was expecting more full meals. When I finally got to that section, I was surprised at how time-intensive some of theme were. If you only have a rice cooker, I'm sure they'd be fine, but if you have the option of using a stove or oven, I'd make those dishes the normal way.

[April (The Steadfast Reader) · Rating 5 out of 5]

AMAZING. Everything I've made out of here has turned out awesome. I love it!

[Ivy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was just a lot more basic than I had hoped. There aren't photos of the recipies. It just isn't a well written cookbook.

[Jennifer Ritchie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beth Hensperger wrote my two favorite, most-used bread books (The Bread Bible and a bread machine cookbook). Since I just recently bought a rice cooker, I was happy to discover that she’s made a rice cooker book as well! It’s full of great information about many types of grains the average American might not think of, and it uses the rice cooker in creative ways. It provides recipes for different types and sizes of rice cookers; my own model is a fuzzy logic rice cooker, so I had whole sections of porridge and fruit compote recipes that would only work in cookers like mine, but alas, the steamed vegetables and custards will work in other, non-fuzzy-logic models but won’t work for mine. So unless you own multiple rice cookers, you will certainly find some recipes that won’t work for you, but the majority of them will work for both kinds. I can’t wait to try some of these.

My only disappointment is that none of the recipes call for Thai glutinous black rice. I bought some at an Asian grocery store because it looked pretty, but I really don’t know how to use it lol. Although I can hardly blame the author for not including such a niche form of rice and catering to the American idiot who has no idea what she’s buying…

[Dustyloup · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's inspired me to try different things with my rice cooker but I'm a "mood cooker" and this book is perhaps better for someone who wants to have everything in place: the right tools, ingredients, etc. But it's frustrating when you choose a recipe and you discover that is only written for another type or size of machine w/ little to no suggestions on how to adapt it to other types. It's "no fail" because it is so specific.
I'd highly recommend getting it from the library to try especially if you have a fuzzy logic rice cooker

[Natasha · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have loved every recipe I have made from this so far. I love that it taught me about different rice and grain varieties that I wouldn’t have thought to try. I use my rice cooker so much more now and am so much more confident putting together my own recipes on the fly.

[Pam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just okay for me wish more of the recipes were appealing to me.

[Kamala · Rating 1 out of 5]

1.5*

[Dray · Rating 4 out of 5]

i was pleasantly surprised by the depth and range of topics covered in this cookbook. If you have a rice cooker this cookbook will teach you to use all of its capabilities and outputs.

[Marlene · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fabulous. I'm so glad I bought this.

[Sara Goldenberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Super happy with it!

[Jnyama · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some interesting recipes, but a lot required cooking part of the meal separately and then putting it in with the rice afterward, which seems as if it defeats the purpose.

[Harga Mejikom · Rating 5 out of 5]

best cooking book

[Sasha · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has been a great success so far, for the most part. With the information in the book, I focused on jasmine brown rice, which is lighter than regular brown rice and also perfumes the whole house while it's cooking, just like white jasmine rice. I've also made Lemon Rice and Saffron Rice (but using veggie stock instead of water); both have been DELICIOUS. I would put that word in bigger caps if I could, or put flashing stars around it--they were that good. It's not hard to take the the recipe for jasmine brown rice, and the recipes for fancy rice dishes using white rice, and combine them so that the rice gets cooked properly. However I have learned that it's much better if I soak the rice first and don't let it stay on the "keep warm" cycle too long, as it can end up a trifle dry.

I did make the quinoa porridge, which was less of a success; the quinoa wasn't all 100% cooked, although it came pretty close. I believe I'm going to buy a fuzzy logic rice cooker, so that I can make porridge and effortless polenta, and the occasional effortless risotto.

I also very much like the tone of the writers. It's natural and conversational. There's a lot of information, and it's hard to wrap one's mind around making many of these dishes in the rice cooker, but it's less overwhelming than other books I've looked at because of the way the recipes are organized. The practical information on types of rice cookers, their respective limitations, and various other considerations is very helpful.

[Margit]

I don't know if this is true of other editions, but for the kindle edition, recipes start out in the middle of pages and there are no pictures at all in the entire book, except for on the cover. I haven't tried any of the recipes yet, but as a reading experience, is has to be the least pleasant cookbook I have ever read. I guess it makes sense that it would be that way because you can change the size of the font in a kindle book, but when I look at a recipe book, I like to flip through the book looking at the pictures for things that look good. For this book I am looking through each ingredient list for things that look like they might taste good, but most of the ingredient lists are split across pages, which is kind of annoying.

Once I finish slogging through and bookmark all the recipes I'd like to try, I think the kindle edition will be nice, because the bookmarks are easy to get to and the book doesn't take up physical space, which is a precious resource in my small house.

[Yaaresse · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some good recipes and tips for using rice cookers for more than rice.
There are few pictures. This doesn't bother me. I know what rice looks like. I know what an onion or spices look like. I guess it freaks some people out not to have a big ol' glossy photo of every step in a recipe, though.

I don't use it as much as I thought I would, but that is because many of the recipes for for fuzzy-logic cookers, which mine isn't. Since my Zoji rice cooker refuses to die (ten years and counting), I'll probably never use the book as much as it deserves.

I'm assigning one star less than the content deserves because of something I notice is a constant annoyance in Hensperger's otherwise terrific cookbooks: the graphics. In particular, the ink/paper contrast and font choices. A cookbook that is really meant to be used by cooks should always put function (in this case, the ability to set the book on a counter and be able to read from it) over form.

[Natasha · Rating 4 out of 5]

OK, so I thought I was a culinary genius when I "discovered" you could cook quinoa in the rice cooker. "Wait until I tell the world!" I thought.

Well who knew, FAR beyond rice and quinoa... you can prepare entire MEALS in the rice cooker! Breakfast! Lunch! Dinner! Dessert! This is a great book. Once you read it, you think "Duh. Of course that all makes sense," but I'm telling you, no one I know knew you could do this. I am inspired : ) I almost think I could hit the road, in an Airstream, with just my rice cooker, and eat well.

Quick, easy, one-dish, easy clean up meals- what more could you ask for?

[Dj · Rating 3 out of 5]

What can you do with your Rice Cooker? Cook Rice of course, you can even steam vegetables when there is a need. Certainly a great way to enhance meals and help make cooking easier. It seems thought that this is only the beginning of what you can do This cookbook opens up a wider range of things that you can do. While some of the recipes are for rice in variations that are based on national dishes, you can also extend this to things like oatmeal and dim sum. A great book to open up the vistas of your menus and add variety to your meals.

[Bax · Rating 3 out of 5]

the actual rice cooker recipes are good, but there is a lot of filler- non-rice cooker recipes (I have a whole wall of books for that, mmmk) and quite a few that are basically "make rice in rice cooker, do all this other stuff on the stovetop, then mix it all together", which isn't really what I was after.

But it's good for the basics of making different types of basic dishes in your rice cooker.

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book does it all. I like the layout and I LOVE the fact that it has so much information on, well, Rice! For a beginner it is awesome to see all the info on types and classifications. Then to have it outline the science behind not only how the cooker's cook the rice, but how/why each different rice type needs different amounts of water or rinses etc... Many great recipes that are clearly and easily explained. Definitely a must have!

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Put on pause 25 November - haven't looked at it in a couple of weeks but do need to get back to it.

Excellent book if you have or are considering a rice cooker. If you haven't purchased one yet read all the stuff before the recipe sections start and then look at the steaming chapters [3-4 includes veggies and desserts] as fancy fuzzy logic ones do not steam (mostly) and that may drive your decision.

[Joanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating array of recipes and techniques using a rice cooker to cook many unusual types of rice as well as grits, oatmeal, and other grains. One of the authors has connections in SC and I was gratified to see references to historic (and now being grown again) Carolina Gold rice as well as references to recipes of her aunt in Florence SC. Great reference book to make use of your rice cooker, and includes clear instructions on type and size of cooker to best use for a particular recipe.

[Deborah Carter · Rating 5 out of 5]

I LOVE this book! I bought it just after my husband I had purchase a new - and very sexy - rice cooker. (Based on the Asian model, but made in Austria.)
I always have used my rice cooker for making more dishes than just steaming rice and this book takes it even further for me, with recipe for dishes with bulgur, polenta, porridges.
Fabulous!