Chinese food? Woks? rice cookers?

[gottahaveahoove]

Does anyone like/use/make any of this?
I have tons of appliances... no need for a wok. Although I do have one for the 'grill'. Not a huge fan of Chinese food, with few exceptions. Is that unfortunate?

 

[madman]

It is unfortunate. No bat soup for you lol

I kid, I kid.

Rice cookers are neat. We don't use them in my family, even though rice is a staple. But then, the Iranian way of making rice basically includes burning the rice in the bottom to make it crispy. But I hate the crispy rice. I'm weird, everyone else loves it. Though sometimes they put potato slices on the bottom, now that's good eatin'. Point is that rice cookers are designed to turn off when the last of the water evaporates, thus intentionally NOT burning the rice. Imagine not burning your food, strange concept.

 

[human]

My favorite rice cooker is a vintage Comet Rice Cooker made by West Bend. You used to be able to send away for one of these for a couple of dollars and a couple of Comet Rice box tops. I think everyone in my family has one of these. It looks like a double boiler with a few holes near the top of where the top part sits down into the bottom part. There are fill lines for rice and water so you can't really mess up the proportions. Just set it on the stove on medium high setting, let it roll for about 40 minutes and you get perfect rice every time. Like MadMan, I'm not fond of crispy, burnt rice and this pot doesn't do that. Sadly, Comet Rice stopped offering these cookers back in the early '80s but they're definitely worth hunting down. My nephew found one on eBay for less than $10 shipped, in its original box with all of its original paperwork.

 

[kirby519]

I'm old school. I can cook rice on the stove in a pot with no problem at all.
A rice cooker is a nice idea. However I don't have room for all the extra equipment.

I do like Chinese food. My good fortune is there are a couple of places around that make dishes I like and am willing to pay them to do. Hence no need for a wok.

 

[fan-of-fans]

I never make Chinese food, so no rice cookers or woks around here.

Once in a while I do like to get Chinese food from the takeout, mostly cashew chicken or a beef dishes. The Chinese buffet in my area too is awesome and has great food, even cooked to order dishes. Though I don't get to go that often. My favorite Chinese dishes are mostly sweet and sour and crispy honey chicken and rice.

 

[madman]

Recently I finally found a good Chinese take-out restaurant, quite by chance. A Chinese guy randomly found my mechanic shop and we fixed his car over a couple days, and he kept asking me if I was hungry. I finally said yes and he brought me lunch from his place. Pretty good. And they're really nice people who already know me by name whenever I call them. Lately too many Chinese places around here are run by non-Chinese people, and the food is crappy.

The local Chinese buffet is kind of a dump, and their food is crap - even though they are Chinese lol. Still eat there because it's like $8 for all you can eat including drinks and they have soft serve ice cream, and really good selection. Now though with this corona crap, they only have a very small selection of crappy food for take-out. :/