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| Cook Pasta With A Rice Cooker |
Cooking pasta in a rice cooker is easy. No draining required.
First make sure your rice cooker can handle the amount of COOKED pasta–remembering that it doubles in volume when cooked. Mostly I make about 1 cup dry, 2 cups cooked in my rice cooker.
For “shaped” pasta like elbows, bow ties, penne, etc. put the amount dry i.e. 1 cup in the cooker. Add water to cover plus maybe 1/8-1/4-inch above the pasta (depending on how soft you like it) If you like it REALLY al dente, then just cover with water.
Add some salt to the water (you can leave that out if you’re watching your salt) but go easy because remember a rice cooker cooks by evaporation. Then add about 1 tsp oil to stop the foaming, close the lid and set to “cook.” I open the lid and stir a few times while cooking to keep it separated. I also try to catch it before it switches to “warm” so it doesn’t brown on the bottom. It’s a bit of a learning curve with times and water amounts, but once you have that all down, you’ll find it’s easy, quick, no waiting for big pots of water to boil, no draining (the worst part for me) and it doesn’t heat up your kitchen which is great in the summer!!!
For spaghetti, I break the spaghetti in 1/2 and cook like I do shaped pasta. About the only thing I can’t do in this is lasagna noodles…since you can’t break them if you make a big dish of the stuff–although I’m trying to figure that one out.
Ankit Chugh says
great post !!!
i have been using this rice cooker from last six months and its been amazing.It works in three modes and has a great capacity of 5L.
Donna Barr says
Interesting. We have a cheap little rice cooker and want to get a stainless-steel one. Our aluminum (yuck) one WILL boil water and make spaghetti without breaking! Have you tried boiling the water in your rice cooker? Or is this a different function in different cookers? And while we're at it – will they slow-cook? Very interesting article.
Judith Hanneman says
Hi Donna–my rice cookers are Wolfgang Puck Bistro–all 3 of them and the only function(s) is "COOK" and "WARM". Oh yes, I've boiled water in there because I've steamed complete meals in the baskets that come with them. The newest one (7 cup which is about 5 yrs old) at least has stainless steaming baskets, but the main bowl is still teflon-coated aluminum. I'd prefer SS myself to be honest.
They actually cook more like a pressure cooker than a slow cooker–sort of like a low pressure cooker because of the gasket. But the difference between cooking in this as opposed to a pressure cooker, is liquids will reduce in a rice cooker. That's why I find it *excellent* for things like baby back ribs where you want a nice syrupy sauce.
Good thing is, like slow cookers and modern pressure cookers, it will switch to "warm" (maybe off too on a different brand) when it senses the water is reduced.
Cherry Berry says
Thanks for the tip! �� I feel like I'll be cooking a lot more things in my rice cooker now. ��
Judith Hanneman says
I LOVE my ones!!! They are so versatile!