Roger Ebert’s “The Pot and How to Use It” — no, not that kind of pot — elevates humble rice cookers to an almost mystic level.
Ebert’s working assumption is that almost any kind of food, except for steak (“that would be a bad idea”), can be prepared in a rice cooker, including a pot roast recipe he’s fine-tuning.
Yes, this cookbook is from the same Roger Ebert celebrated for his insightful film reviews.
Being a national film critic is a terrific job, but hell on the waistline, thanks to the relentless pace of film festivals and popcorn and junk food as the only readily available food source.
So he decided to buy a rice cooker and make his own meals. He likes the three-cup size, which is light and small enough to fit in a carry-on bag.
Another plus: the technology is no-d’oh. A basic rice cooker’s two functions are: Cook and Warm. All it needs is an electrical outlet and some simple ingredients. Fire hazards aren’t a worry because the Pot (Ebert’s capitalized pet-name for his beloved appliance) turns itself off once the food’s cooked.
After trying it out at the Sundance Film Festival, Ebert became a convert. In 2008 he wrote a blog entry about the Pot, and it struck a nerve. Devotees speak of it with reverence as an all-knowing, practically sentient appliance.
“You put Minute Rice and the correct amount of water into the Pot, and click to Cook. Minutes later, the Pot clicks over to Warm. The rice waits inside, cooked perfectly,” Ebert writes.
“Tomorrow night, you put in whole grain organic rice and the correct amount of water into the Pot, and click to Cook. Forty-five minutes or an hour later, the Pot clicks over to Warm. Again, the rice is perfectly cooked.
“How does the Pot know which kind of rice you put into it? . . . How does the Pot know how long to cook the rice? It is an ancient mystery of the Orient. Don’t ask questions you don’t need the answers to. The point here is to save you some time and money.”
The Pot knows how long to cook lots of things besides rice — grits, oatmeal, bulgur, mung beans, potatoes, chicken, shrimp, spaghetti, miso soup, mama-dofu (an Asian tofu dish), bacon-cheese frittata and more. (Some recipes involve less time on Cook than on Warm.)
There’s some trial and error, like learning which substances are prone to boiling over or over-baking into a Pot-shaped brick.
Once mastered, the Pot becomes a fantastic friend for the time-harried and shortcut-taking cook. There’s no shame in following Ebert’s example of starting with a canned or boxed soup and supplementing it with more chopped veggies.
And for readers who prefer science to sorcery, here’s the Pot’s secret: There’s a thermometer inside that switches off when the internal temperature starts rising about 212 degrees Fahrenheit, signalling that the liquid has boiled off or been absorbed, and the Pot clicks from Cook to Warm.
But even knowing this, that aura of mystery still lingers, like steam over a Pot that’s just clicked from Cook to Warm.
Claire Martin: 303-954-1477 or cmartin@denverpost.com
