I chanced upon a youtube video about some guy who married his rice cooker. This was of course a stunt that was pulled in order to attract eyeballs, but it did remind me how important these appliances are to many people.
It is of course possible to cook rice without rice cookers, but the quality of the final cooked rice tends to vary from cooking to cooking. Not to mention it takes a lot more effort to continue monitoring it as the cooking progresses and the rice slowly absorbs the water. Rice cookers automate the process, and create the same fine product at the end all the time (assuming you use the same or similar rice variety), given an accurate amount of water used at the beginning.
When we travel, we almost always bring a tiny rice cooker with us. It’s usually a cup or cup and a half model that can produce really good rice in less than half an hour. The rice cooker is so small that it can easily fit in a carry-on luggage or a backpack.
The funny thing is that we almost always get stopped by security at the airport (if we are going by plane), mainly because any bag of rice or other grain (like oatmeal) placed inside the rice cooker will tend to block x-rays and other detection devices. This means that (like laptop computers), we have to take out the rice cooker and make sure it’s empty.
But once you get to your destination, the rice cooker can be plugged into any hotel outlet to provide delicious newly-cooked rice for your meals. Not only that, it can be used to boil water as well, and thus you can use it to make various soups and cooked vegetables.
The tiny models for traveling tend to be basic rice cookers, but larger ones that are the mainstay of many homes can be wonders of technology, with wi-fi enabled features, and the capability to be remotely programmed and manipulated from anywhere using a mobile app.
The importance of rice cookers to many people is such that when I first saw the youtube video about the man marrying his rice cooker, I had to remember that this was only a skit, and not some understandable and not so peculiar behavior, given our obsession with one of the most important grasses in the world…rice.
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