A few weeks back I got a chance to review a product from Aroma Housewares it was a rice cooker from their site that is also on sale at Walmart. I needed to get a rice cooker for when we have big family functions or when I wanted to make sushi at home. I found that a rice cooker just worked much better. When it arrived in the mail however I was ever more surprised that it was much more that just a rice cooker. It was also a slow cooker and it also has the ability to steam cook as well. It has a delayed timer so you can put your recipe items in and delay the start of the machine so it would be ready when you get home from work. There were so many great features on this thing I couldn’t wait to give it a spin. With the holidays and then our very mild winter so far there just hasn’t been a time I thought of pulling it out but soon I discovered I was wrong I could be using this much more often that I thought.
Let me share some of the features that I found and used with this machine and I am sure there are more. First I think because it’s a rice cooker the inner pot is not heavy like my slow cooker’s. Its a very light weight metal and it also appears to be non stick. It also has measurements inside the pot so its super easy to see how much you’re putting in if you’re just cooking rice. Another thing I noticed is that were I was cooking in this is wasn’t hot on the outside. My slow cooker would be super hot on the outside that I burnt my fingers once. This one was cook to the touch. Of course like I mentioned before you can steam cook in this beauty. There was a small basket that you can use to steam cook by itself or when cooking another item in the cooker as well. The directions were super easy and the book had lots of recipes.
My favorite feature on this machine I think was the water catcher on the side of the unit. I first noticed the little plastic cup on the side when I was checking out the cooker. I didn’t know what it was for so I just put it back on the cooker and started cooking. About three hours into cooking I opened up the cooker to check on my food and to make sure it didn’t need any extra fluids. That’s when I realized its use. When you open the lid the water that’s on the top of the lid slides into a crease and falls into the water catcher so that water doesn’t fall back into your food or all over the machine and counter. I thought that was pretty neat.
I ended up making a BBQ pork shoulder in my machine. I just used a base recipe online and cooked it for eight hours. I ended up stopping it an hour early because the pork was already falling off the bone. I pulled it out the cooker and pulled off all the pork and shredded it into smaller bits. I added some extra BBQ sauce and then served it for dinner. It was super tasty and clean up was such a breeze. I just took out the pot and emptied the fluids in the sink and washed it out with soap and water. It was clean and spotless in less than a minute. No greasy residue or stuck on foods. I absolutely loved it. My new project is trying to make Jambalaya that I found on the Aroma website. I also want to try this Paella recipe as well and if you’re looking for ideas they have an entire recipe section on their website. I highly recommend that you pick up one of these if you’re in the market simply because of all the features and the multiple uses of the one cooker.
Interested in buying? Visit their website and check out their products Get your own 20 cup rice cooker online – $64.99 or 8 cup rice cooker – $39.99 or check out any of their other products Get Social Like Aroma Housewares on Facebook and follow on Twitter. Disclosure: I was provided the product mentioned above for review purposes. Any opinions expressed are my own and have not been influenced.
