Thursday, January 8, 2009

Spicy Chicken and Mussels Rice - A Rice Cooker Disaster


You won't believe how many disasters have happened in my kitchen. Disaster. Disaster. Disaster. Too many ot them! This is getting too boring, even for me. Sigh. But I feel the need to share the gospel with you guys. I MUST let you feel what I felt when I took a bite of this disastrous rice dish. MUHAHAHAHAHA!

What the heck happened?

From Raw to Mushy:
My Disastrous Spicy Chicken & Mussels Rice


It all started from one word: LAZY
If you heard any of the following phrases coming out of my mouth/appearing on my blog, they generally mean one thing:
"I don't have enough time" = lazy
"I want to create a one pot wonder" = lazy
"I want to try an easier/more innovative way to do this" = lazy

Cuting a long story short, I wanted a spicy rice dish, which include chicken and seafood of some sort (I chose mussels), and planned to dump them all into my wonderful and trustworthy rice cooker.

I prepared all of the ingredients:
- 2 chicken leg fillet, skin removed, cut into bite sized chunks
- 6 pieces of large mussels, remove from shell
- 200ml chicken stock
- 3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
- 1 onion, diced
- 2 bell peppers, remove core, remove seeds, diced
- 1 small can of tomato paste
- 1 tsp cumin
- 1 tsp ground corriander seeds
- salt, pepper, sugar, chilli powder, olive oil, water
- 2 cups of rice

Here's the method that caused the disastrous rice:
Marinate chicken pieces with a bit of salt, pepper and olive oil. Pour rice grains into rice cooker, add chicken stock and water up to the required level, add everything else, mix and press "Cook" and wait until the rice cooker beeps, which means "Your delicious dinner is ready!"

Oh....I wish!

I opened the lid of my rice cooker after the beep, and I saw a beautiful looking dish. It was gloriously red, it smelt fantastic, the chicken meat looked succulent and juicy. Then I saw the grains of rice, and I knew something's wrong. They looked RAW. I took a bite. They WERE RAW!!! Uh oh! SOS! Helppp!!!

Luckily, sous chef has been distracted by Xbox 360, that bought me some more time.

I transferred half portion to a non stick pot and continue to cook it with low heat, stirring from time to time, tears dropping into the dish and probably made it tastier. The other half was left in the rice cooker, and I pressed "Cook" once more. Let's see if any of those two methods worked....

They didn't. Although I closely supervised the one cooking in the pot, the moment the rice's done, it was all mushy. Sob, it was probably because of all the tears. The other half in the rice cooker? Ditto. Sob sob. I actually love my rice rather mushy. However, this time, it is just beyond mushy. It's super mushy. Even I, the mushy rice lover, hated it. Oh gawd!

Did I throw the dish away? Nope. We still finished it. Apart from the super mushy rice, everything else tasted fantastic. Dammit. I will find another way to cook this dish.

I should be more careful in conducting my "experiments" in the name of laziness. I am hoping for less disasters this year (as none would be impossible).

Check out my other disasters here.

18 comments:

~Ling~ said...

Good try! Your next try will definitely be less "mushier" =) I love mussels!

SteamyKitchen said...

Disaster? Oh I don't believe it! But it looks so good!

Anonymous said...

Mushy rice can be very demoralizing, even if you tell people you meant to do it! It all looks very tasty, though, and the other ingredients seem like they would work together beautifully.

Elsye said...

ooo noooooo bikin aku ceglukan, enak tenannnnn

Little Corner of Mine said...

It's look darn good to me even though it's mushy. You were right, we can't trust our rice cooker all the time, I had disaster when I trying to cook my chicken glutinous rice in it. It came out raw, ended out caused me extra work to steam it.

A.G said...

wakakakak..... lucu jg.. pgn gæ rice dish ala paella yo Rit hihi.. emang kok kl masak bareng di rice cooker pk beras jasmin biasa jd benyek bin becek padahal ndak naik odjek :D

makanya pk beras yg long grain ato unkel bens rice ga bakalan memet kl pgn dimasak bareng gitu :D

Wandering Chopsticks said...

Hey, you're just "keeping it real" with all these disasters. We can't cook perfectly every time. Just makes you human. But the dish does look yummy!

TS of eatingclub vancouver said...

Um... maybe add more water and say it's congee? =) It doesn't look *toooo* mushy in the picture!

discoverylane said...

Raw rice!? I have done it many many times in all my disaster experiments. Other than the fact that you might not like microwave food, try it next time to finish cooking of your raw rice. Just sprinkle a little bit of water on the uncooked rice and cover with wet paper towel, put it in microwave for 2 mins. Amazingly work well...

Lidia Sianturi said...

ketok enak kok Rit terutama mussel-e..wah fotomu canggih saiki..lens anyar yo?

discoverylane said...

O! Just under cook rice. That's not really a disaster. Out of my countless under-cooked rice experiments, microwave is the best tools to finish off the cooking of rice. Amazingly good to recover from your experiment.

Noob Cook said...

I saw the pic b4 the word disaster and I thought it was beautiful heheh... this happens to me b4 ... must wait for rice to cook down after frying b4 sending to the rice cooker =D

Unknown said...

guyssss thanks for the microwave tip! gosh, why did i not think of it! it sounds brilliant. i think it would totally work ^_^ i'll try it next time

test it comm said...

I have not tried using my rice cooker for more than cooking pretty plain rices and other whole grains. I think I will need to experiment with cooking more in it.

Hong 阿豐 said...

Woh, your rice is so gorgeous, must be very delicious. Btw, mussels is my favourite as well^^

Sara said...

I hate when things go wrong, it can be so frustrating. It looks good in your pictures though!

Retno Prihadana said...

rit segone kethok benyek, tapi ketok yummy juga lhooo :)

Dwiana P said...

so yummy!!!!! gw paling doyan tapi alergi:(