Pancakes - In a Rice Cooker

I had a short-lived blog about cooking various things in a rice cooker.  I might just have to revive it one of these days ;)  Until then, I'll put some of my recipes and tweaks here.

So why do I cook in a rice cooker?  If you haven't read any other post on this blog, you might not realize that I don't have any major appliances.

No refrigerator ~ All cold items are stored in a plastic bucket on the back porch until I'm able to buy a fridge.  It's cold, so it's good.

No washer and dryer ~ Between the laundromat and my sweet [ex] Husband, my clothes get washed.

No stove/oven ~ I cook in a rice cooker, boil water with my Hot Shot, use my sort-of-working microwave, and bake in an 18-quart roaster oven.  I also have a bread machine.  I don't bake in it, I just use it for mixing dough.

I was once called the MacGyver of the kitchen.  I can cook anything in anything.  And, well, it's pretty much true.  I have yet to encounter something that I haven't been able to cook with those small apppliances that I have.

Okay, so pancakes in the rice cooker.

A rice cooker is a boiling pot.  That's it.  The sensors are set to click the cooker to warm when the pot gets above the temperature of boiling water, 212 F/100 C.  As long as there's water in the pot, it will stay on.  As soon as all water is absorbed by something else, or evaporated, it will click to warm.

It takes some things longer to cook in the rice cooker.  I actually made brownies in there once, but it took 8 hours.  I won't be doing that again.

Pancakes take longer than they would on a stove, but not that much longer.  And you end up with perfectly round pancakes, that aren't prone to burning :)

Okay, so how do you do it?

Use whatever pancake recipe or mix you like.  Mix according to normal directions.

Put a small bit of butter in the rice cooker, and turn it on.  You could also coat the bottom with cooking spray instead of butter.

Put about 1/2 cup of batter in the bottom of the cooker and let it spread out.  Leave it on until it clicks.  Check the pancakes.  When the entire top of it looks dry, it's done.  Depending on the thickness of the batter, this could be as soon as it clicks to warm, or it could be a few minutes longer.

Using a hot pad, take the cooker pan out of the cooker, and flip your pancake onto a plate.

Perfect pancakes in a rice cooker!

Only one side will be brown, and that's the side that ends up on top when you flip it onto the plate, so no one will really know the difference!

And it's so much easier, and much less messy, than cooking them on the stove!

3 comments:

akaTK said...

But our rice cooker is the micro-wave type. Sheesh

Unknown said...

Oh, you can make them in the microwave, too :) They just won't be golden brown LOL

Anonymous said...

This is genius. I'm a student & only have a rice cooker. Have tried many things in there that turned out perfectly (veggies, pasta, apple/fruit sauce)...but was deserate not to be able to make pancakes...can't wait to try tonight :)