Editor’s note: The theme of Gohan Lab is to help people make simple, tasty “gohan” (meals).

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Baffled by how to best use electrical cooking appliances when making meals?

Enlightenment has arrived in the form of our new four-part series starting this week, which focuses on how to do just that.

Though they're multifunctional and convenient, people may have trouble making full use of the cooking tools, but we'll explain their basic structures and help you boost your cooking repertoire along the way.

First up is Chinese-style steamed rice, which we're going to make this time in a rice cooker.

Instead of using sticky rice (“mochigome”) that is the usual choice for the dish, in this recipe, the rice cake is placed on regular non-waxy rice (“uruchimai”) and then cooked.

A lot of people run into the problem of buying sticky rice and then not being able to use it up. Using rice cake instead is an easy way out.

When rice cake that has melted is mixed with rice, the texture turns out quite similar to sticky rice. But some rice cookers, especially the pressure cooker type, prohibit the addition of rice cake when cooking rice, so make sure to check the manual beforehand.

Though soaking rice sufficiently in water is said to be the key for cooking tasty rice, recent rice cookers can control the temperature and cook white rice nicely even if the rice isn't soaked in water in advance.

“When heat of 50 to 60 degrees is maintained for a long time, water seeps into the rice even when cooking is in progress. The amount of sugar also increases by the action of the enzyme,” says Hidemi Sato, visiting professor at Nippon Veterinary and Life Science University, who oversaw the recipe's cooking science aspect.

NOT ALL RICE COOKERS COOK THE SAME WAY

Rice cookers heat rice mainly in three ways. The type that has an electric heater at the bottom is somewhat weak in heating power, which tends to cause a difference in the temperature at the bottom and the upper part. This type, however, can cook small portions of rice nicely.

The IH (induction heating) type causes the entire pot to produce heat, allowing rice to be cooked evenly. The cooker turns out rice that is tight in texture and draws out its intrinsic flavor.

The pressure IH type offers a combination of pressure cooking and IH heating that cooks rice with strong heat. The water content reaches the core of the rice grain and the rice turns out chewy.

BASIC COOKING METHOD

(Supervised by Katsuhiko Yoshida in the cooking aspect and Hidemi Sato in the cookery science aspect)

* Ingredients (Serves four)

2 “go” (1 “go” is about 180 ml) rice, 2 pieces cut rice cakes (kiri-mochi) (50 grams each), 3 Vienna sausages (“winna” type), 10 grams dried shrimp (hoshi-ebi), 2 small shiitake mushrooms, seasonings (2 Tbsp soy sauce, 1 Tbsp sake, bit of white pepper, 2 Tbsp oil)

About 450 kcal and 1.7 grams salt per portion

1. Rinse rice and immerse in 300 ml water for about 10 minutes (PHOTO A). Even if rice cooker does not require you to soak your rice in advance, you should soak seasoned rice anyway since the salt content lowers the rice's water absorption rate.

2. Immerse dried shrimp in 2 Tbsp water. Cut sausages in 1-cm-thick rounds. Remove hard end from shiitake and cut into dice with 1 cm sides.

3. Cut rice cake into dice 1 cm on the side (PHOTO B).

4. Place rice in rice cooker with water, spread evenly and top with rice cakes and all your other ingredients. Since water used to soak dried shrimp is flavorful, add it as well. Add seasonings and mix lightly. Try to mix just the seasonings and keep the ingredients on the rice (PHOTO C). Leave for about 10 minutes and cook.

5. When cooked, rice cake pieces on the rice will melt. Since they become sticky and stretched as when microwaved, mix in with other ingredients.

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Katsuhiko Yoshida is the owner-chef of Jeeten, a restaurant in Tokyo’s Yoyogi Uehara offering Chinese home cooking.
Hidemi Sato is a visiting professor at Nippon Veterinary and Life Science University.

ARRANGED VERSION

“Chazuke” (tea poured on bowl of rice) Chinese-style cooked rice

Serve Chinese-style cooked rice in bowl, top with some finely chopped thin green onion and “tenkasu” (crunchy bits of deep-fried batter) and pour warm oolong tea on top. Doing so is a good way to make the dish less chewy.

COOKERY SCIENCE

The heat level and heating time are keys to cooking rice. Rice cookers in the old days were unable to maintain their temperature in the simmering and steaming stages. This caused excess water content to remain and prevented the rice from turning out fluffy.

But in recent years, there are more products that can retain a high temperature. While it is recommended to soak rice in water between 30 minutes and two hours in advance before cooking it if you are cooking in a regular pot, there are rice cookers today that let you skip the soaking stage by adjusting how the rice is heated.

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From The Asahi Shimbun’s Gohan Lab column