Crock pot rice is a time saver. For a simple side dish, you can set it and forget it.
Don’t skip the rinse before your rice goes in the slow cooker
Rinsing your rice thoroughly before cooking removes excess starch, allowing the rice to cook up into tender, fluffy individual grains, which requires a little bit of work but is worth it. If you don’t rinse your rice, the extra starch that remains on the grains will cause it to clump together, turning it into rice pudding rather than the fluffy base or side dish you were aiming for.
So spend a few extra seconds rinsing the rice before adding it to the water in the slow cooker, then walk away and come back to a batch of perfect rice.
For most of my life, I didn’t appreciate white rice.
I favor whole grains over their “white” counterparts because of their nutritional advantages, but only to a certain extent.
White rice may have a higher glycemic index than brown rice, which causes blood sugar levels to rise and fall more quickly, but it also digests much more easily as far as grains go, and I love (LOVE) sushi. So, even though I still follow a relatively low-carb, paleo-friendly* diet, I adore white rice when I need a major (gluten-free) carb infusion.
I’m not alone in this, in fact; many Paleo Powers That Be have embraced white rice in the past year or two.
The only problem – with any rice (besides rumblings of arsenic in it, which are much lower in white rice than brown, and lower still if you buy Asian-grown rice vs. US-grown. Not that you should be worried about arsenic in your rice, but I understand that some of you may be.) – is the time it takes to cook.
I have this strange memory of my parents carefully and slowly cooking rice over low heat while stirring almost constantly when I was a child. On the stove, I frequently lack patience and produce a batch of rice that is unevenly cooked and possibly slightly burned, but I won’t admit to anything.
So that brings me to another letter of love for my slow cooker.
I love having rice with meals. Every day of the week, you can add flavors and other ingredients to make it different in addition to being healthy. Although I adore my rice cooker, I typically made rice using this method back when I didn’t have one. On the stove, I always seem to mess it up, but in the crock pot, it turns out perfectly!
Simple and no rice cooker needed. Try this simple recipe for crockpot rice today for the ideal side dish.