There is always some work to finding the best model or device, no matter what kind of technology you are investing in. In fact, this is something of a quest that I have gone on, many times in the course of my life.
From my first TV to my first car, from my first video game to my first guitar, even my first electric shaver, boom box and coffee maker. Well recently I started on a new kick, learning to cook and I found out that it wasn’t the same world as other technologies.
I should explain that I already had a lot of stuff for my kitchen, but what I really had a problem with was getting rice to cook right.
It was like a bad game of win lose or draw. No matter what, I could always find some way of screwing up the rice. Either it was too soft, too sticky or I just burnt it up. It actually wasn’t funny to me, but rather it was very frustrating.
Which is when a girlfriend of mine suggested that I might benefit from the purchase of a rice cooker.
The premise was sound, so I began to do some research on these devices unknown to me. Figuring that it would be like any other piece of technology, that I could deduce most of what I needed to know from online reviews by customers, buyers and others. Boy was I wrong.
The problem is simple, in essence.
No matter where I shopped online, I found that there was a wide range of different rice cookers, all of which seemed to be decent kitchen items. Although the price range for such rice cookers could go anywhere from $10 all the way to $1200. As if that made any sense to me at all.
Assuming there would be more clarity to be gained, I proceeded to read through the reviews on several websites one by one. I will not name the particular websites to protect the innocent, but the more details I read, the more murky my choices became.
Some reviews made wonderful claims and boasts about different size cookers, being able to make so much more rice. Other reviews claimed certain models cooked higher quality rice and were made from special materials, making them seem almost like magical pots. Still other reviews made wild claims that only the Asian made rice cookers were worthy of cooking rice and no other cookers could compare.
In none of these reviews could anyone seem to address my primary question.
Why do I need a rice cooker?
It seemed that if I did need one, there would be some way to tell, which one best suited my needs. And if I didn’t need one, then I prayed for the cosmic powers of all things rice like to give me a sign, so I could end this exhausting search for the perfect rice cooker. But alas, it seemed that no answer was forth coming.
So I gave up, deciding that perhaps I would never be able to understand this strange frustrating new technology. That I maybe the one person in the world who will never be able to cook rice to anyone’s satisfaction. It was just then, that I looked one last time for a review that might express what I wanted from such a mythical device.
Which is when I found this review while looking for a rice cooker.
It was from an anonymous person, probably posted as a joke, but it expressed everything I wanted from something to cook my rice in. The poster went simply by the name Rice Man, who so eloquently typed out this haiku like review of the perfect rice cooker ( which I have reprinted here with all the punctuation and grammatical errors, so please forgive them in the spirit of this article ).
i put rice in
i put water in
i turn on
rice cooks
i eat
i happy
i satisfied
end
Yes, Rice Man.
No truer words have never been spoken. So I turned off my computer and went to my stove, determined to find a way to make rice the old fashioned way. Since buying a rice cooker did not seem to be in my future. At least for now.