Cajun Meals for the Rice Cooker
Rice Cooker Meals by Neal Bertrand: Cookbook with Easy Cajun Cooking
Jun 26, 2008
Rice Cooker Meals by Neal Bertrand bears the promising subtitle “Fast Home Cooking for Busy People.” Bertrand, a Louisiana native, has been cooking in rice cookers for three decades and has previously published two books of Cajun recipes.
This book offers the kinds of recipes one might expect from a Louisiana boy: a variety of jambalayas (“Black-eyed Pea and Sausage Jambalaya;” “Shrimp Creole Jambalaya”), meats (“Cajun Pepper Steak”) and seafood (“Crawfish and Corn Maque Choux,”). There are also options for rice and vegetable side dishes.
Rice in a Healthy Diet
Recent years have trained people to be wary of foods with lots of carbohydrates. White rice falls squarely in the carby category. However, Bertrand consulted with a licensed nutritionist at Louisiana State University who reassured him that rice is not fattening if it is eaten in reasonable amounts.
“Using brown rice instead of white rice is usually better, and use the recommended portion sizes,” says Bertrand. “ We need at least 120 grams of carbs for our system to work properly. One half-cup of cooked rice has 15 grams of carbs which means for you to have 120 grams that would be four cups of cooked rice, which is a whole lot of rice for one person. It’s not the rice that’s fattening it’s what you put on top of it, such as sauces or cheeses, etc. “
Selecting a Rice Cooker
All the meals are basically one pot meals that do not require layering for steaming. Bertrand believes that stainless steel cookers are the best for preparing these kinds of dishes.
“I recommend using a stainless steel rice cooker for this reason: When cooking in aluminum pots, the aluminum metal leaches out into liquids or the food you are cooking. With stainless steel, the metal will not leach out,” says Bertrand.
Browning Meat
A word to the wise: many of the recipes call for meat to be browned before it is added into the mix. There are two reasons to do this. The first is for taste: browning locks in flavor and juices. The second is safety. Although Bertrand includes an explanation at the end of the book of how to brown meat in a rice cooker before cooking the full dish, it is true that cooking the meat separately reduces the risk of food borne illness.
This is only a problem for people who don’t have the ability to brown meat separately. Since the book was pitched as a solution for college students who don’t have stoves, that is a bit of a conflict, but not unmanageable. There are a few recipes that do not require meat at all and, of course, anyone with the strength, time and energy can use Bertrand’s recommended approach to browning and draining the meat in the cooker itself.
