A Rice cooker is one of the most used kitchen appliances in this world. Even then, most people don’t even know how to use a rice cooker properly. It’s seen that majority of the rice cooker users use this kitchen appliance for cooking rice only.

This article is for you if you think that you can’t cook anything else except rice in a rice cooker. Today, we’ll look at some of the most amazing rice cooker recipes that you can cook easily with your rice cooker.

Plus, we’ll talk about the basics of how a rice cooker functions, how you can use one properly, how much water do I use for 2 cups of rice, and we’ll end with a buyer’s guide. So, stay with us till the end. We have some amazing tips for you!

How Does a Rice Cooker Function?

A rice cooker is essentially a boiling pot. Now, you may think that boiling isn’t cooking, and that’s true. However, rice cookers this very method to cook everything.

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You need to put a lot of water in the rice cooker no matter what you’ll be cooking in it. A rice cooker keeps providing heat to the system until all the water in the system turns into steam. The steam moisturizes and cooks the food ingredients.

Once the entire water turns into steam, the rice cooker switches to ‘warm’ mode. In this mode, the rice cooker doesn’t cook the dish, but it simply keeps it warm until you take it out.

Top Recipe Ideas:

The Rice cooker is great for cooking rice. Then again, rice is the staple food of most people. However, having rice every day of the week can get a bit repetitive. Here are some 2-cup rice cooker recipe ideas for you:

Coconut Rice:

Did you know that you can make an amazing dish if you combine coconut milk with basmati rice? Yes, the coconut rice dish is a very famous tropical dish, and it can give you a Caribbean flavor with a hint of Asian taste. You can cook this exotic dish very easily in your 2-cup rice cooker too! To cook Coconut rice, you need the following ingredients:

2 cups of water
½ tablespoon of salt
400ml of coconut milk
One tablespoon coconut sugar
1 ½ cup of basmati rice

In this recipe, you can use an equal amount of brown sugar if you’re short of coconut sugar. Although the result won’t be the same, you’ll still be able to cook a delicious meal.

Cooking coconut rice is as easy as it gets. Rinse the rice properly at first, then add all the other ingredients to it. Finally, turn the rice cooker on. However, once the cooking is done, you shouldn’t open the lid right away. Let the rice cooker rest in the warm mode for some time. This will allow the moisture to distribute evenly across the rice, which will result in better cook.

Herb Lemon Rice:

If you’d like to have a nice citrusy flavor to your rice, you can try the herb lemon rice. This recipe includes fresh lemon juice that provides an exotic flavor to the herb lemon rice dish. Then again, this dish also comes with oregano and basil.

½ lemon juice
One teaspoon of basil
One teaspoon of oregano
Jested Lemon as per necessity
¼ teaspoon of salt
One tablespoon of coconut oil
1 cup of basmati rice

You can also add chicken stock or broth to this mix. Doing so will add a great flavor to the rice, but if you don’t prefer that, you can avoid this. However, you should only put the chicken broth or stock after the cooking is done.

Hard-Boiled Egg:

It’s one of the easiest things to cook in a rice cooker. The boiled egg is a very famous dish, and there are thousands of ways of doing this. However, we feel that boiling eggs in a rice cooker is the easiest. You need eggs, water, and a rice cooker! Put the required number of eggs in the rice cooker, flood it with water, and turn it on. You can enjoy it once it’s done.

Pasta:

There are a lot of people who would never even imagine cooking pasta in a rice cooker. However, you can do that quite well in a rice cooker. A rice cooker can boil water rapidly, which makes it a great choice for boiling pasta. If you want to make plain pasta, you only need:

Pasta
Salt
Water

All you need to do is put the ingredients in the pot, and then you need to turn the rice cooker on. You may need to cook the pasta from four minutes to ten minutes. You shouldn’t cook for more than ten minutes as that can make your pasta too soft.

Then again, you can also cook pasta in the sauce. You need to boil the pasta in the same way first. Then, you must add sauce or broth to the mix, and you’ll be done!

Cilantro Lime Rice:

Cilantro lime rice is another citrussy rice recipe that you can cook easily in a rice cooker. The Cilantro and lime combine to provide a Mexican and an Asian feel to the rice, and you’ll feel a nice twang from the lime too. To cook this, you need:

Juice of half a lime
½ cup of chopped cilantro leaves
Zest of 1 lime
One tablespoon of coconut oil
¼ teaspoon of salt
1 cup of basmati rice

If you want the fluffiest rice for your meal, you need to rinse the rice properly before putting them in the oven. Once you’re done rinsing the rice, you need to mix the ingredients. After you’re done with that, you need to put the rice cooker to ‘White rice’ mode. If you’re using a one-click rice cooker, you can use the standard settings. How much water do I use for 2 cups of rice? About 4 cups will do the trick!

You need to cook these for 10 minutes roughly. Once you’re done cooking them, you can turn the rice cooker off, but don’t serve just yet! Before serving, you better rest the rice for 10 minutes. This will allow the moisture to spread throughout the bowl.

Mac and Cheese:

Did you know that you can cook mac and cheese easily in a rice cooker? In fact, cooking Mac and Cheese in a rice cooker is quite easy. You need the following ingredients to do that:

1 cup sweetened almond milk
1 ½ cup macaroni
1 ½ cup chicken broth
¾ cup shredded Cheddar cheese
½ shredded mozzarella cheese
¼ teaspoon paprika
¼ cup shredded mozzarella cheese
¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese

Although you’ll need a lot of ingredients, you don’t have to take the pain of checking the rice cooker every now and then. Usually, it takes 30 to 40 minutes to cook the macaroni. You should check after half an hour if the macaroni is well-cooked or not. If it is, you can let it rest for a bit and then serve.

Mexican Rice:

If you’re okay with a Mexican rice recipe that excludes all the chopping and sautéing, you can take a look at this recipe. Although this dish won’t taste like the quintessential Mexican rice you’re used to, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’ll taste bad.

In fact, it’s one of the best rice dish recipes that you can cook easily in a rice cooker. In this recipe, you won’t need to chop anything. The Mexican flavor will come from a bit of salsa that’ll be added to the mix. Here are the ingredients that you’ll need:

1 cup basmati rice
1 cup of salsa
2 cups chicken or vegetable stock
1/4 teaspoon chipotle chili powder
One tablespoon of coconut oil
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/4 teaspoon salt

To get the best result and the fluffiest rice out of this dish, you need to rinse the rice properly. Although this is a simple step, a lot of people avoid it completely. Then again, whether you’ll add coconut oil or not is completely up to you. If you don’t like the flavor this brings, you can avoid it completely.

Once you’ve done rinsing the rice, you should mix all the ingredients in the pot of the rice cooker. You need to cook this rice for around 15 minutes. If you overcook or undercook it, you may miss the actual flavor of the rice.

What Makes these Recipes Easy?

These are the easiest 2 cup rice cooker recipe ideas, but what makes these so simple?

First and foremost, none of these recipes requires any chopping or sautéing. I know a lot of people hate these, and so do I!

Secondly, although these are easy to cook, you can eat them as a whole meal. This is a great way of saving time and effort while getting amazing dishes.

Then again, you can cook these recipes in any sort of rice cookers. You won’t need the advanced ones that cost a fortune. Even if you have a ‘One-click’ rice cooker, you can cook these meals easily!

Due to these reasons, we think that these are among the easiest 2 cup rice cooker recipes that you can find out there.

Some Basic Tips on using Rice Cooker:

Now, as we’ve said, a lot of people don’t even know how to use the rice cooker properly. Although this won’t make the cooked rice inedible, it will certainly make the taste and quality worse.

How much water do I use for 2 cups of rice?

“How much water do I use for 2 cups of rice?” This is one of the most frequently asked questions that we get from our readers. The answer is how much water you need depends completely on the amount of rice you’re about to cook. So, how can you figure that out? Here, we’ll talk about that.

The key to figuring out how much rice you need is the ratio. Usually, most people use the 1:1 ratio of water to rice. However, we found out that while this ratio works great for most types of rice, it doesn’t work well with brown rice.

So, we tested out some variations with brown rice, and we found out that brown rice gets the best result if two ¼ cups of water are used with a single cup of rice. As you can see, you need considerably more water when it comes to brown rice.

How do I make fluffy rice in a rice cooker?

Most people want their rice to be fluffy irrespective of whether they cook it in a rice cooker or on the stove. The only way of making your rice fluffy is by rinsing it well. If you don’t rinse the rice properly, you won’t be able to get fluffy rice out of the rice cooker, and there’s no other way around it. So, we highly urge you to rinse the rice thoroughly before you cook it.

Another thing a lot of people forget is letting the rice rest. You can’t just serve the rice as soon as it finishes cooking. Unless you let the rice rest in the rice cooker for a bit, you won’t get fluffy rice. Doing so allows the moisture to spread evenly across all the rice in the pot, and they swell and get fluffy.

Why is my rice sticky?

If you don’t rinse the rice enough before setting off to cook, you’ll end up having sticky rice. This is another reason why we emphasize rinsing rice so much. Another reason you might find sticky rice in your rice cooker is that you added too much water. To know how much water do I use for 2 cups of rice, check the point we talked about earlier.

How do I flavor my rice before and after cooking?

People usually use herbs, spices, or stock to flavor rice. However, the question is when and how should you add these to get the best result.

If you’re adding stock or broth to the rice, you can try using that liquid instead of water. If you add water to this mix, the meal won’t taste good. Then again, you need to be very careful while adding the stock or broth. Otherwise, the rice may be completely runny or too dry.

Then again, you should add the spices and the herbs before you start cooking. Otherwise, the flavor of these won’t get mixed properly in the rice.

How to Choose the Best Rice Cooker?

It’s not that easy to buy a new rice cooker. There are a lot of factors that you need to consider before getting the right rice cooker for yourself. Here are some of the major factors that you may need to look into:

Lid Type:

There are two types of lids that you can find on rice cookers. There are sealed rice cookers, and then there are unsealed rice cookers.

The sealed rice cookers usually come with transparent lids. These lids allow the users to check what’s inside comparatively easily. However, these can also splatter the dish on top, which is definitely a drawback.

Then again, there are the unsealed rice cookers. These rice cookers prevent the splatter, but they come with their share of drawbacks. These are harder to clean, and they’re quite hard to dismantle as well.

Programmability:

Now, there are cheap and affordable rice cookers, and then there are extremely expensive rice cookers. You can get the cheaper options around $40 to $50, but these don’t offer programmability. You’ll only get a start and stop button, and there will be a ‘Warm’ mode that can keep your dish warm after it’s done cooking.

On the other hand, you can get the expensive rice cookers that offer a lot of different features. You can get the ‘Cook’ mode, ‘Warm’ mode, and ‘Slow Cook’ mode. In fact, a lot of rice cookers also offer the feature to cook each type of rice differently, which is another amazing feature.

Accessories:

When you’re looking for a suitable rice cooker, you better look if the rice cooker offers any accessories or not. Not every rice cooker will offer accessories, but these are extras, and they’ll be necessary once you start cooking.

You should look for a spatula, a measuring cup, and a steam tray at least when you go to buy a rice cooker.

Conclusion:

You’ll find a lot of different types of rice cookers out there. The recipes we mentioned above can be cooked in all sorts of rice cookers, including the small 2 cup rice cookers. The tips we mentioned are applicable to all sorts of rice cookers, and you should try to follow these as they’ll make your experience much smoother.

Then again, before asking yourself, “How much water do I use for 2 cups of rice?” you better look at the section where we discuss how to determine the right ratio. Finally, we hope that the buyer’s guide will help you select a suitable rice cooker for yourself.