Before we moved to Germany, I asked a friend who lives there, “What should we bring from Japan to Germany?” “Uniqlo Heatech, rice cooker.”
Bring a Rice Cooker to Germany?
I did buy Uniqlo Heatech, but rice cooker? “There are a lot of rice cookers in Germany, but mostly made in China. And don’t expect it’s multi-function, it usually has a button only.” Our friend said.
To me, rice cooker has only one function – to cook rice. Even the Japanese rice cookers have a lot of fancy functions – to make cake and bread, to cook congee, slow cook, speedy cook, I only use the most basic function. If I had to buy a new rice cooker, carry it from Japan to Germany, and its function is to only cook rice, then I think it doesn’t worth the effort.
I also considered using pressure cooker or donabe (Japanese clay pot) to cook rice. However, if it’s newly bought in 6 months, or you bought more than 6 months ago but you have never used it, it also counts as taxable item. Although the tax maybe not that much, or nobody can find out when did you buy it, it still increase the chance of getting stuck in custom. To avoid any trouble or delay, we decided not to bring any rice cooker. So, “how should we cook rice?” “God knows. We’ll figure it out.”
Better said than done. (Read how we burned the Fissler pressure cooker while cooking rice)
We stayed in a short-term apartment for 3 months, and there was a simple rice cooker with only one button. We had no measure cup, so just used a small bowl to measure the approximate. And rice? Yes, we needed to buy.
Luckily, there’s a oriental grocery store called Go Asia nearby, and we bought Thai jasmine rice and brown rice.
If you go to local supermarket, you can also find rice, but in small pack as German don’t eat rice so much.
Trial and Error
With this simple rice cooker, I had no idea how much water is needed or how long to soak, I only had to trial and error to find out the perfect formula. The first day I cooked, the brown rice was still hard. We struggled but poured over a lot of sauce to finish it. That night, we had stomachache.
There had to be a Soup
So, to avoid disappointment, I always cooked a soup in every dinner. If rice got too hard, then we made into soupy rice. Just the remaining problem was, we didn’t have a soup bowl. Either too big, or it’s too small. That’s why Curry Boy had to drink soup like this.
After trial and error for a week, some improvement could be seen. But I still think the Japanese rice cooker is the best. 😛
