Ah, a report on the rice cooker stew (also I need to remember to remove that double post):

Didn't work out as well as I had envisioned it. Beef broth probably would have made the whole thing better, and I think i'd use wine instead of the beer. (red wine) (haha, I haven't had any beer, but if I hadn't gone back and edited that you might assume I had as I said "bear" instead of "beer" at first)

Anyway, the main problem, other than the fact that I ended up putting too much pepper and not enough salt (salt is easy to fix, at least) is that since the rice cooker basicaly has two settings (boil and warm) and it keeps the water at a boil until it boils off then when the temp starts to rise it flips to warm, the meat cooked too hot (water boils at 212 degrees f and beef is best cooked to 140-160, if you get it too hot it dries out). If you boil meat, as long as you keep the water at the temp you want your meat to cook to you can cook it for as long as you like with no trouble, but if you cook it too hot it'll get over-cooked and dry.

So a rice cooker isn't a good option for cooking things with meat in them.

The other ingredients, however, did really well. I suppose I could pan cook the beef sepperate and use beef broth in the stew itself and then combine the ingredients later.
- posted by Nick @ 8/24/2005 10:03:00 PM | 0 comments