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Spring is a good time to turn around your kitchen cupboards, pushing the stew-pot and soup-pot to the back, bringing grill gear and salad bowls to the front. Goodbye, hearty and heavy--hello, light and quick. One large-capacity appliance, however, should remain within reach all spring and summer long: your rice cooker/steamer. A rice cooker/steam fits perfectly into healthy spring eating. Early vegetables and greens need only a brief steaming, emerging sweet, crunchy and delicious. Try your steamer for fresh asparagus, baby bok choy, tangy mustard greens, snap peas, broccolini and fingerling potatoes to make the most of early spring crops. Greet baby beets and turnips with a burst of steam and splash of citrus-based dressing for a novel warm spring salad. Lighten your calories by steaming fish, shellfish or chicken breasts for a main course. Fat-free cooking doesn't mean dull dishes--a spritz of lemon and herbs will turn these quickly-cooked proteins into family favorites. Eating lots of rice doesn't seem like the best way to qualify for this year's swim suit sales, but whole grains play an important part in a healthy diet, and your rice cooker/steamer can add perfectly-cooked barley, wheat berries, bulger wheat and brown rice to your menus with the turn of a dial. Adding finely chopped vegetables and a bit of olive oil are the only tasks needed to create filling, family-friendly whole-grain salads and side dishes. Flexibility capacity adds another dimension to using your rice cooker/steamer. Some pots work best when they contain a specific amount of food. Functioning consistently with quantities ranging from 4 cups to 20 cups, the cooker/steamer expands the range of quick dishes for every meal and saves valuable meal-planning and meal-prepping time. Use your cooker/steamer to cook once for two meals. Flexible capacity also comes into play when food has the same characteristic. Cooking greens, wonderful sources of B vitamins and iron, need lots and lots of space in the cooking pot to yield a surprisingly small quantity of cooked greens. Popping greens into your rice cooker/steamer saves watching and reduces the need for excess cooking liquid. Busy cooks tend to avoid greens because of the work and time they can take. Add these nutritional power sources easily to your diet with the cooker/steamer. Asian cooks have long experience in vertical cooking--stacking pots atop each other to use a single heat-source, rather than spreading out over every burner on the stove. Your restaurant dinner may appear in bamboo baskets, woven carefully to fit into a steamer-stack. Long-steaming dumplings may be topped with fish filets and crunchy, crisp vegetables cut in paper-thin slices or slender match-sticks. You don't need bamboo baskets to create the steam-stack experience at home. Accessories for your cooker/steamer let you prepare several foods at the same time, shortening meal preparation time even further. Finally, busy families struggle to balance schedules so they can eat together. When the effort fails, pop leftovers on a heatproof plate and gently steam them warm for the late-comer. Put a good nourishing meal, rather than unhealthy snacks, in front of family members who are running hard with work, school, sports and end-of-the-school-year activities. So kiss your dutch oven goodbye until the fall, but keep your rice cooker/steamer within easy reach. The sun's out, the breeze is warm, and it's going to be a long healthy summer! Lawrence Reaves writes for Hamilton Beach, a kitchen appliance company who offers a selection of rice cookers and many other products including blenders and toasters. For more information about rice cookers or any other product click here.
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Rice cooker, rice steamer, healthy food, health food,
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