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Excepting the occasional date night out, I find I like nothing better than coming home to our own home cooked meals. Sometimes this means once a mood cooking marathons that then become quick hot meal: batches of beef crumbles, meat balls, meat loaves, chicken delights, pasta dishes or tamales. Sometimes a quick tossing of canned and fresh foods ala Rachael Ray. But my favorite kitchen tool is rapidly becoming the crock pot.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve tried on several crocks of various sizes. I’ve finally settled on two – a programmable crock that shifts to warm after cooking (but off after about 16-18 hours), and a multi-bowled crock that allows you to cook a lot or a little quickly and easily.

Throughout my experiments with crocking food, I’ve been somewhat disappointed when rice or pasta dishes promise crockerability, only to actually read instructions that say “cook everything but the rice and pasta in your crockpot at X for Y time, then serve over fresh pasta or rice”. Or that end with “just throw it in the crock at lunch time: your afternoon is free for errands!” Sorry. My lunch hour is usually 30 miles away from home and I think they’d frown at a crock pot in the lunch room. It also didn’t help that my first programmable crockpot tended to shut off a lot, ruining many a dinner, even before I dropped it on the floor and broke it.

Other thoughts for quick hot dinners including augmenting a crocked meal using my rice/veggie steamer. But that’s at least 40 min for white rice, longer for brown or other mixed grain alternatives. Pasta is quicker, but you don’t get the flavor of the dish as easily if they are boiled quickly and separately. And sometimes, darnit, I just like a nice bowl of dill-flavored brown rice with my lentils all ready for me when I or the hub walk in the door.

My little internet friends ragged on me for trying so hard to make all day or overnight rice in the crockpot. Mom and I spent hours hashing out different options for making it work, considering the merits of steamed versus boiled versus microwaved rice options. I kept checking my favorite crock blog of the year but she didn’t have the magic rice in the pot answer for me, though her posts gave me a number of clues.

Finally, after a lot of trial and error, I think I’ve got it. Plain rice, flavored rice, you name it. Basmati, Jasmine, long grain, short grain, brown, wild, or a scoop of everything in the pantry. I can throw the rice de jour in a crock and have it ready for dinner, whether I come home 5 hours after it’s “done” or 20.

And, it cooks in the same pot as the rest of dinner. Stew, chili, our crowd’s red beans and rice recipe (my own variation) … one pot, no waiting. Set it up in the morning, and have it ready to dish and serve when someone gets home. I’ll be making it Friday for the kids and the baby sitter, if you want to tag back and follow the recipe in pictures when we’re done. I’ll set it up in the morning, and it will hang out all day, cooking and waiting for the kids and the baby sitter (date night! whoohooo!) to be ready for dinner.

The secret? Silicone feet. I have a set of silly feet silicone cupcake holders I got at one of Target’s many after-holiday-mark-down-a-thons.

  1. First, pop the feet in a crock (I use four).
  2. Atop the feet, steadily balance one oven-safe bowl containing one part rice and one part water.
  3. Pour the rest of dinner around the “feet” of the rice bowl, creating liquid bath. Don’t pour in too much food: leave at least an inch (if not more) from the top of the food to the top of the rice bowl to accommodate food bubbling away from the rice.
  4. Cook on high or low for the amount of time desired to complete the main dish – at least three hours on high or four to five on low.

If your crock isn’t tall enough to do this and close properly, consider making small aluminum foil balls to lift your rice bowl instead. And only if you don’t mind tinfoil taste. I’ve got the feeling that a cooking trivet (cast iron, made for putting in the bottom of your cast iron dutch oven to grill meat) might work as well, but I don’t own one, so that’s still theoretical. While bowl-on-crock might be safe, it’s likely to scorch even if nothing cracks or breaks.

Happy crocking and come back Friday afternoon for pictures!

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