Cooking Rice in Your Halogen Oven is Easy. When I first got my oven I didn’t realize you could cook rice or pasta in it. I did an internet search or two, but nothing came up. I spent ages thinking it wasn’t possible. Then I saw this rice cooker on Amazon and the penny dropped.
Realizing it was possible I decided to give it a go. I wanted to completely remove the need for a hob as well as the main cooker. (I haven’t fully succeeded yet but have reduced its use a lot).
It works beautifully. I put in the usual one part rice to two parts water into a Pyrex bowl with a lid and waited (not very patiently) for it to cook.
How Long Does Rice Take to Cook?
My rice took about 20 minutes in my oven at about 180/200 degrees using easy cook brown rice.
The larger quantities can take much longer. I did start it off with hot water. You have to wait for the hot water to start to heat up and then bubble.
Waiting for that seemed to take ages.
But it was obviously cooking well while I waited. I waited for the rice to use up the water the same as you would normally, but kept a close eye on it so it didn’t dry out completely.
I have found I needed slightly more than a 2/1 ratio of water to rice as after all of the water had been fully absorbed the rice still had a tiny bit of grainy feel to it
I also found a bonus as cooking like this greatly reduced the amount of steam that went into the room.
Quick Rice Cooking Instructions
- Decide how much rice you want and pop it in your chosen dish.
- Add twice as much water as rice. Then add slightly more water to that.
- Put in your oven and set the temperature to 180/200C (356F/392F) for 20 minutes.
- Things tend to cook quickly in a halogen so keep a close eye on your rice to make sure it doesn’t completely dry out.
How To Make Sure Your Rice is Cooked Properly in the Centre
Getting your rice cooked right through can be a problem with Halogen cooking with rice you are not meant to open it when being cooked. The easy cook rice dish has been designed especially to stop this problem. If you only cook small amounts you may not need it, but if you cook larger quantities it would be really helpful.
The best way to make sure your rice has been cooked properly. When Halogen oven cooking apart from using the correct amount of water is to make sure the heat fully reaches the centre of the rice.
These rice dishes are specially designed to fit in your halogen.
However, they can also be used in a normal cooker.
The design has a hole in the middle so that the heat is fully distributed to all the food in the oven.
This is a great idea.
Why Have a Hole in The Center of the Rice Dish?
The reason the easy cook dish has a hole is to make sure things cook in the middle. I am not sure how well a large amount of rice would cook without it.
I only cooked a small amount about 50g for one serving. For this amount, you can easily get away with not using this cooker. As I said, I used a small Pyrex dish for mine. (This is when I discovered the need for oven gloves!!)
It would pay to use something like this dish would be if you were cooking a large quantity of rice for the whole family.
With that amount, the centre is less likely to cook and it is quite hard to remove the lid to stir things. And as with rice, you are not meant to remove the lid anyway, it is better left alone.
The Advantages of Cooking Rice/Pasta in Your Halogen
- easy
- much less steam and moisture in the room
- perfect rice
- Great for one pot rice recipes
The Disadvantages of Using Your oven For Cooking Rice
- Unless like me you only cook a small amount (one serving) of rice you cannot really cook anything else at the same time.
