Planned Purlhood

I picked up a slightly used Sanyo Micom Rice cooker (3.5 cup size) off eBay last summer for a little over $60.  It is one of the most used small appliances I own for the kitchen.  The others being the coffee maker, George Foreman Grill, and the hot air popcorn popper.

Mostly, the rice cooker does just that – cooks rice.  I make a lot of bentos for work, and those always include sushi rice in some ilk or another (onigiri is most common, stuffed with wasabi-mayo-tuna or cheese).  However, the cooker has some “other” settings that I’m beginning to explore.

Tonight, I had a hankering for soup.  I don’t keep much pre-prepared food in the house for my own consumption, so most everything is made from scratch.  I pulled out some Bob’s Red Mill Vegetable Soup mix and two cans of chicken broth.  The last time I made soup from this mix, it took a couple hours on the stove top and came out like sludge (what with all the simmering/boiling it took to cook the harder bits in the mix).  The directions say to use a 1:4 ratio of mix to liquid.  Lo and behold, the “Porridge” setting on the rice cooker is exactly that!  Victory!

I think it took less than an hour to cook.  It uses fuzzy logic it just “goes” until the last 15 minutes or so.  It does a count down/timer from there.  The soup came out beautifully.  Everything was cooked just right – the barely hadn’t gone completely splody, the lentils & peas were not bony, and the alphabet pasta was still readable.  I’ll augment it with John’s favorite vegetable next time and he’ll happily devour it, too!

I also cook batches of plain lentils in the rice cooker for mixing in with other dishes.  A favorite here is a mix of lentils and couscous – one or the other cooked in a meat broth for full flavor.

This is the soup I made today.  It came out quite good, so I’d thought I’d share it!

Potato soup with Leeks & Keilbasa

• 3 leeks
• 2 carrots, sliced
• 2 stalks celery, sliced
• 1/4 cup butter or olive oil
• 2 quarts chicken broth
• 1 pound keilbasa, 1/4″ slice
• 1 cup instant potato flakes
• 1 tsp dried marjoram
• black pepper to taste

1. Trim & discard dark green and root ends of leeks.  Split remainder length-wise, then slice into 1/4″ pieces.  Rinse in water to remove any sand.  Drain.
2. Melt butter in soup pot over medium heat.  When foaming has subsided, add leeks.  Sweat until limp, about 3 to 5 minutes.  Add remaining vegetables.
3. Add broth and herbs.  Bring to simmer.
4. Add keilbasa, cook for at least 10 minutes, or until meat is heated through.
5. Add potato flakes, lower heat and stir well.  I let the soup sit on low heat for another 5 minutes to ensure the potatoes had hydrated fully.

Notes:  I used 3 tablespoons of Knorr roasted chicken base dissolved in two quarts of water.  I also used the medium setting on my mandoline to slice the carrots & celery.