All You Need to Know About Caring & Using a Commercial Rice Cooker
In years past, cooking rice properly was a time-consuming and difficult task that required a lot of oversight and maintenance. Fortunately, modern technology has made it far easier to cook rice! Today's commercial rice cookers are affordable, easy to maintain, and incredibly simple to use. They're a rare kitchen appliance that can be considered "fire and forget." Once the rice cooker is loaded up it handles everything without the need for oversight. That's good news for a busy kitchen because it’s one less thing to worry about.
Rice cookers are simple to own and maintain, but it's still good to know the basics. Here's a short guide to making the most of your rice cooker.
How to Use A Commercial Rice Cooker
1. Measure out the appropriate amount of rice and water
In most cases, measurement is simple. For every cup of dry rice, you generally also want one cup of water. However, there are exceptions. Long-grain rice requires more water than short-grain, and brown rice needs more water than white. So, for long-grain brown rice, you may need as much as two cups of water.
Either way, expect one cup of dry rice to yield two cups of cooked rice. Always be sure you’re using reliable measuring equipment to ensure accuracy.
2. Rinse the rice
Even if the rice comes to you cleaned, it's always a good habit to rinse off the rice in a strainer before cooking it.
3. Fill up the rice cooker
Start by pouring the allotted amount of dry rice into the inner bowl. Spread out the rice so that it's evenly distributed, then, pour in the water. Often, the cooker itself will have markings on the inner bowl indicating proper water levels to make this even easier.
4. Start cooking
Close the lid, plug in the rice cooker, and depress the COOK button or lever. From here, the machine does everything on its own. There's no need to watch over the cooking or do anything aside from waiting around 10-15 minutes.
Once the rice is done, the cooker will usually make some sort of sound, indicating that it's moved from the cooking process to simply warming the rice.
5. Serve quickly
Cooked rice cools and becomes less palatable quickly, so serve it immediately. Don't try to keep the rice in the cooker for too long or reheat the rice: this will ruin it or even risk burning the rice and your patrons will notice.
Cleaning A Rice Cooker
Cleaning your rice cooker is also exceedingly simple. The inner bowl is most often made of aluminum or a similar easy-to-clean metal, so it usually requires nothing more than handwashing with soap and water. Never use abrasive scouring pads or other items which might scratch the interior.
While the bowl is out, make sure the heating element at the bottom is free of any food debris.
Then, give the exterior a quick wipe with warm water. That's all there is to it.
Let Zanduco help your restaurant find the ideal rice cooker for its needs!
Need a rice cooker for your restaurant? Zanduco Restaurant Equipment & Supplies has a full line of top-quality models to choose from! To learn more about our inventory, visit us online or call 1 (855) 926-3826.
