I used to think rice cookers were basically one-trick ponies.
Turns out, that beige box sitting on your counter—the one you probably impulse-bought during a Target run three years ago—can handle way more than jasmine rice. I’m talking oatmeal, hard-boiled eggs, even chocolate cake, though I’ll admit the cake thing sounded deeply suspicious when I first heard about it. My colleague swears by making risotto in hers, which seemed impossible until I remembered that rice cookers are essentially just controlled heat vessels with a thermostat that clicks off when internal moisture hits a certain threshold. The keep-warm function? That’s not just preventing your rice from turning into a brick—it’s basically a slow cooker setting that hovers around 140-150°F, give or take, which means you can braise meat, steam dumplings, or even make yogurt if you’re feeling ambitious and slightly unhinged.
Here’s the thing: most people never crack the manual. They fill it with rice, add water, press a button, and call it done. But those additional settings—”porridge,” “steam,” “slow cook”—aren’t just marketing gimmicks.
The Steamer Basket Nobody Uses But Definately Should
That perforated tray that came with your rice cooker and immediately got shoved into a drawer? It’s a steaming powerhouse. I’ve watched friends spend $80 on standalone vegetable steamers when they already own the exact same technology. You can layer broccoli, carrots, even salmon filets on top of cooking rice, and everything finishes simultaneously—the steam from the rice does all the work, and you end up with a complete meal using one appliance and roughly zero effort. The Japanese have been doing this for decades with their “takikomi gohan” tradition, where proteins and vegetables cook directly in the rice pot, flavors bleeding together in ways that feel almost accidental but are completely intentional. Honestly, once you try steaming chicken thighs over ginger-scented rice, regular baked chicken tastes like cardboard. The texture comes out weirdly perfect—not dry, not rubbery, just tender in a way that oven-roasting never quite achieves. Some models even have dedicated steaming timers, though I usually just eyeball it and check after 20 minutes, which probably horrifies actual cooks but works fine for me.
Wait—maybe the weirdest use case is breakfast grains?
Oatmeal in a rice cooker sounds wrong until you try it. Steel-cut oats, the kind that normally require 40 minutes of stovetop babysitting and constant stirring to prevent scorching, turn into hands-off overnight magic when you use the timer function. Throw in oats, water, maybe some cinnamon or diced apples, set the delay timer for 6 AM, and wake up to something that tastes like you actually tried. I guess it makes sense—the gentle, even heat distribution prevents the bottom-of-the-pot burning that ruins so many stovetop attempts.
Bread, Soup, and Other Things That Shouldn’t Work But Somehow Do Anyway
The rice cooker bread phenomenon feels like internet folklore, but it’s real. I’ve seen recipes for banana bread, cornbread, even focaccia adapted for rice cooker vessels, and while the results aren’t bakery-perfect—no crispy crust, obviously—the interior crumb is surprisingly legit. The enclosed environment creates steam, which keeps everything moist in ways conventional ovens can’t replicate without fussy water pans. You won’t get Maillard browning, but you will get cooked-through, fluffy bread with minimal effort and no preheating. Some people flip the loaf halfway through using the “cook” cycle twice, which feels like cheating but produces better results. Soups and stews work similarly well—the keep-warm function acts like a crockpot, breaking down tough cuts of meat over several hours until they shred with a fork. I made a chickpea curry last month entirely in my rice cooker, mostly because I was too lazy to pull out the Dutch oven, and it tasted better than my stovetop version, probably because I couldn’t obsessively stir it and disrupt the cooking process. The inability to meddle turns out to be a feature, not a bug. Anyway, there’s a whole subculture of dorm room cooking that relies on rice cookers as the sole heat source—pasta, dumplings, hot pot, ramen with actual vegetables—and once you start seeing it as a versatile heat-and-steam device instead of a rice-specific tool, the possibilities get weird and useful in equal measure.
