The Pot and How to Use It: The Mystery and Romance of the Rice Cooker

America’s foremost film critic confesses to obsession with “the pot,” an electric rice cooker whose application he’s broadened to create his kitchen’s most versatile appliance. Ebert caught on early that the rice cooker is the crock pot’s virtual twin and can readily duplicate it as a time- and labor-saving appliance. Ebert touts the rice cooker’s health benefits by inventorying its friendliness to low-sodium, high protein, reduced-fat cooking. Ebert’s blog’s many fans have contributed cooker-adapted recipes running the gamut from quotidian boxed macaroni and cheese to spicy beef chili. A few recipes, such as mushroom risotto, call for preliminary action in a skillet before everything gets dumped into the cooker. Scrupulous cooks may find Ebert’s expansive use of the rice cooker the gustatory equivalent of watching Lawrence of Arabia on one’s iPhone—a lot of the product’s flavor and textural detail disappears. --Mark Knoblauch