PSA: You can use your rice cooker for more than cooking rice. Just flick the switch on your rice cooker and be amazed at what it can do!
While a rice cooker may of course be the answer to the eternal question of 'how to cook rice perfectly' question, these easy rice cooker recipes will deliver entire meals with less effort but heaps of flavour. Some of these recipes are entire meals cooked in the rice cooker, others use the rice cooker as the final step after some quick prep.
Wondering how to cook chicken fried rice in a rice cooker? This recipe is a hack for a fantastic version of khao man gai, Thailand's popular chicken rice. Adam Liaw's recipe cuts down on effort and washing up but delivers plenty of flavour via a punchy dipping sauce.
Credit: Jiwon Kim
Hankering for claypot rice, but you don't have a claypot? This 'lazy' lap cheong-infused rice recipe from chef Duncan Welgemoed delivers the comforting Cantonese flavours of a claypot rice, made in a rice cooker. This variant also adds some modern Asian twists with the addition of chilli crisp oil and nori sheets.
Credit: Jiwon Kim
This dish, from Chase Kojima, combines Japanese rice ("our key element to my every day meals", he says) with vegetables and salmon, for a fresh, filling meal cooked entirely in the rice cooker.
Credit: Adam Liaw
Try Adam Liaw’s take on easy Lebanese chicken and rice with an Asian twist of using a rice cooker! Including both chicken and beef, this double protein packed rice is not only filling, but delicious.
Credit: Jiwon Kim
"This is a version of a Cantonese dish that my Mum makes as a simple dinner," says Jennifer Wong. "In Cantonese, the name translates to 'has flavour rice', and the flavour comes from the umami of shiitake mushrooms and the chicken marinade, as well as the fragrance from the lap cheong." Serve straight from the rice cooker or transfer to a serving dish.
Tasty rice (Chicken claypot rice cooked in a rice cooker) Credit: Adam Liaw
All the flavour of Vietnamese roasted chicken rice – without the oven. Jillian Nguyen's smart rice cooker version starts with pan-frying marinated chicken that finishes cooking over the heat of the rice, allowing the rich, savoury juices and rendered fat from the chicken to infuse every grain with flavour.
Credit: Jiwon Kim
Another meal cooked entirely in the rice cooker. Abalone is often considered a tough meat to cook, and it can take a long time for it to become tender and tasty. Adam Liaw discovered this recipe while travelling in Japan, and it combined thousands of years of abalone diving history with a modern rice cooker to produce the most tender abalone.
