10.31.11- Monday: Revised: Curry!- Gadget cooking

Curry has become a staple in our family. it's one dish that I can be assured that the leftovers WILL get finished!

We stat with whatever leftover meat happens to be in the house (this week it's unidentified freezer poultry), 1 large sweet onion, two boxes of Golden Curry (1 medium, 1 mild), a bag of frozen stir fry style veggies I like Bird's eye's sugar snap pea version, or Flavorite's  Japanese stir fry version.  You will notice that neither of these have bell peppers. I'm allergic, and that's sad.  oh- and ten cups of raw jasmine rice.  (why so much?  you haven't seen my son eat rice, have you...)

Today's GADGET is the 20 cup Rice cooker by AROMA.

 I have this rice cooker: 

It's the large Aroma from Target, and I have no idea how I got along for twenty years without one.  It has settings for white and brown rice,  for saute and then cook ( you can do risotto in this!) , for steaming, and my favorite, a "keep warm" setting.  The liner is Teflon, and cleans up like a breeze! It also has a delayed start feature, so that I can set it up in the morning, and have it start cooking so that it will be ready in time for dinner.

Start the rice cooker by adding rice and water as directed.  This takes anywhere from thirty minutes to an hour to cook the rice, depending on how much you're cooking. If you're doing less than a full load of rice, toss the frozen veggies in the steamer basket to cook.  they'll stay crisper that way.

In the meantime, on the stove top, start sauteing your onion.  I like mine in fine rings, but you can dice yours if you like.  It's the flavor that's important here.  I use about 2 tbs of a plain oil like canola, and 1 tsp of sesame oil to saute my onion and meat in.

Let's talk meat- almost any meat edible  by humans will do, though seafood and fish do not stand up well to the flavor of the curry, and shrimp in particular need to be added very late in the process.  We've used about every kind of supermarket available animal and bird in our curry, as well as various kinds of sausage.  This week it is mystery poultry from the depths of the basement freezer.   With the freezer burn on this beast, I'm going to thaw and then boil it in salt water to hopefully save as much of the meat as possible.  When it's cooked though, I'll dice or shred it, and add it to the skillet with the onions.   Brown it up in there to add caramelization and flavor to the meat.  Follow the directions on the Golden Curry- add water, simmer, add flavor cubes, let them melt.  Just before serving, add the steamed vegetables from the rice cooker.  Serve over rice.

We don't do desert every night in our house, but tonight will be some form of Ice Cream- no oven to bake yet.  :( 

Pictures tomorrow!