Rice optional

No busy person can dispute the wonder of the one-pot meal. Slow cooker, pressure cooker, stew pot, saucepan — it doesn’t really matter. It’s all about convenience and time savings. Add another pot to the list: the rice cooker.

What makes this appliance special is its un-specialness.

"The beauty of cooking with the rice cooker is that everyone has one and knows how to use it," said Rebecca Woodland, a vegetarian chef who has developed recipes for the rice cooker. "Kids from Hawaii don’t have a kitchen in their dorm room, but they usually take a rice cooker with them to college."

With an inexpensive, basic rice cooker, a few easy recipes and some imagination, the appliance can deliver simple dishes with a minimum of effort. Don’t expect much in the way of sophisticated cooking, but recipes can produce tasty results nevertheless.

"Basically, what the rice cooker does is boil and simmer," she continued. "You cannot roast or bake in it."

Woodland has used the appliance for cooking whole-grain breakfast cereals and steaming veggies. She has also developed recipes such as "instant" vegetarian chili and a creamy polenta she says is especially delicious.

"In the rice cooker it never gets lumpy," she raved. "And though most recipes say to stir the polenta continuously, in the rice cooker you only stir it at the end, when you add all the other ingredients."

The "instant" part of the vegetarian chili refers to its canned beans and that the cooker is used primarily to heat the ingredients enough to meld the flavors and simmer the dish.

Woodland also likes to do "step" cooking, meaning that she adds ingredients to the pot during different points in the cooking process. Veggies, for instance, are added after the rest of the dish is well simmered and nearly done to avoid overcooking.

Though Woodland doesn’t recommend cooking raw meat in the rice cooker, Roger Ebert does in "The Pot and How to Use It," a tome that is half cookbook and half ode to the appliance. Of working with meat, Ebert says, "Never put in meat and chicken so soon it will overcook."

I agree with Ebert because the temperature in the cooker gets extremely high. But in adapting a mushroom chicken recipe from his book, it didn’t matter if the bird went in early because the dish had lots of gravy, resembling a chicken stew. The recipe calls for a can each of cream of mushroom soup and chicken broth, a few chicken thighs cut into bite-size pieces and some vegetables.

I chose to include chunky pieces of zucchini, which I dropped into the pot along with the raw chicken and other ingredients. I like the stewed, melt-in-your-mouth quality of the squash cooked well done, but others might consider it overcooked. If so, add veggies to the pot later in the process. Some frozen corn mixed in right before serving added a nice contrast in texture.

Though this dish might seem just as easy to make over the stove top, the rice cooker was more convenient — I spent no time on the cooking process save pressing the "start" button.

Absolutely heavenly was Garlic Chicken on Fragrant Rice, a dish of jasmine rice and bite-size chicken pieces that could easily serve as an entree or a potluck offering. Chicken bouillon, smashed garlic cloves and olive and sesame oils give the dish a flavorful, hearty feel, while the bite of fresh ginger offers a perfect balance.

Spaghetti in the rice cooker might seem odd, but it does work. Combined with rotisserie chicken, jarred sauce and some chopped mushrooms, it’s the height of convenience after a long day. Though boiling the pasta requires tending toward the end of the process, using the rice cooker allows for a 20-minute walk or a shower.

One piece of advice from Woodland to heed, to prevent spoilage: "When using meat products, cook the dish and eat it fairly quickly after it hits the ‘warm’ setting. Don’t leave it on ‘warm’ all day."

Both Ebert and Woodland became experts in rice-cooker cuisine when they turned to the device for healthful fare while on the road. Film critic Ebert traveled to festivals nationwide and was able to maintain a low-sodium, low-fat diet via the cooker.

Woodland was diagnosed with cancer in 1996 and revamped her diet. She attended the Living Light Culinary Arts Institute in California and specializes in raw and vegan cuisine. She is also the author of "The Blonde Vegetarian."

While on the road, "my main meal of the day was always made in the rice cooker," she said. "The maids thought it was weird, but it was an easy way to get more variety and not be at the mercy of someone else’s cooking."

Overall, with a little bit of experimentation, simple recipes in the rice cooker are easy to adapt. Add a little of this, change out that. Naturally, a recipe for a 10-cup cooker will need to be reduced for a smaller pot. There’s not too much else to know.

"It’s not rocket science. It’s no different from using a blender. How long do you need to experiment with a blender?" said Woodland. "Rice-cooker cooking is as simple as it can possibly be, yet the result is every bit as good as other (kinds of preparation). Why do it the hard way?"