Add me to the Samsung appliance hater’s club. Had a problem with a motor and found out it’s super common for them to die within days/weeks of the warranty expiring.
This whole “things always die right after warranty” is a silly myth. It’s just variance.
Not what I said, but OK
I’ve had good experiences with Samsung TVs and and a Samsung laptop.
For other products I’ve been scared off by reviews, so I’ve never tried them.
Yeah, I should probably amend that to “kitchen appliances.” I’ve had good success with Samsung phones and TVs.
Is anyone into astronomy and could recommend a telescope for beginners?
Nobody asked, but I’m going to put in a recommendation for Waste King garbage disposals if you need one. These things will chew through an entire chicken carcass if you wanted it too. They also have a 20 year warranty. We put one in this house about 7 years ago. A year or two ago the thing started making a sound from hell. I recorded it, send them the video, and they had a new one out to me in less than a week.
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Rice cooker for a single person
I’m pretty sure any $20 rice cooker is fine, but all chefs will tell you to just cook rice in a pot. I just follow Dave Chang’s advice; rinse the rice thoroughly before cooking, don’t measure out water (just cover rice with ~ 1 inch of it), bring to boil then cover and reduce to simmer, remove from heat when all water is gone, sit for 5 minutes then fluff.
I had a rice cooker for years and used it a handful of times. Now I just eyeball it and cook it once a week in a pot.
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I think every Asian person I have ever known use a rice cooker. They are ubiquitous in every Asian country I’ve ever been too.
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Look for Zojirushi brand.
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That’s weird because the Asian foodies I know rail against rice cookers and the Asian chefs I follow on social media / podcasts do as well ¯_(ツ)_/¯.
Is think that is two things, first people buy cheap ones which are useless. Second, if you don’t cook rice a lot it’s a lot of space for a single use appliance.
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Which chefs?
Dave Chang, Danny Bowen (maybe?), guests on Chang’s podcast. I can’t remember ever hearing a professional chef speak in favor of rice cookers.
I also tend to subscribe to Alton Brown’s disdain for unitaskers. Cooking rice isn’t hard. I’ve been following the method I described above for months and it’s been fast and easy.
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Maybe just get an instapot if you don’t have one. Probably a more efficient use of counter space and money.
I have a shitty stove I’m pretty sure the burner only has one temperature so it’s impossible to simmer it right. Also I’m incredibly lazy.
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Instant Pot’s rice function uses pressure to cook rice which imo is one of the worst ways to prepare rice and many other grains. A pressure cooker is a good way to get a lot of food on the table quickly, but not great at cooking rice correctly.
I suggest a Zojirushi rice cooker, they are far and away superior to nearly all other brands commonly available to Americans.
And rice cookers are absolutely the way to cook rice. Next time you’re in sushi restaurant (2022?), look and see where the sushi chefs are pulling their rice from. In Japan, rice cookers have >95% household penetration and are one of maybe 2 appliances that live on the counter (hot plate for boiling water is the other). Zoji and maybe Mitsubishi are the most popular rice cooker brands in Japan, if I’m remembering correctly.
My company has investigated launching in Japan and when I was there demoing our products and trying to sell them in, the feedback was consistently “lol too big” and “lol can’t make correct rice”.
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Anecdotally, my Chinese SIL would give away one of her kids before she gave away her rice cooker.
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Alton Brown doesn’t consider rice cookers to be unitaskers.
I think Chang is in favor of knowing how to cook rice without a rice cooker, but his restaurants do have them. Here is an article mentioning the presence of one at Momofuku Ko.
Ming Tsai seems okay with rice cookers.
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