You can prepare lentils in an Aroma rice cooker because it has slow cook and other grain-specific buttons. It’s a nice convenience for incorporating legumes into your diet. Simply begin with a one-cup measurement, then add the lentils straight in the inner pot.
In this process, it’s not how fast you do something but rather how accurate you are getting the ratio correct at the start. Next, rinse the lentils. Position the pot under the tap and just let it flow. Thoroughly washing the lentils remove the dust, but cloudy water mean there is still some debris.
The cooking process
Then you add more clean water and repeat until the runoff is clear. That washes away any remaining dirt and grit so your last bite will be clean.
After washing the lentils thoroughy, you’ll want to add some water. How much? There’s a set ratio that matter a lot to getting the right consistency. For each cup of lentils, add two and a half cups of water.
If you don’t use enough water, the lentils will be dry; if you go overboard, they’ll turn mushy. Stick with the 1 to 2.5 ratio. That was good enough the first time.
Shut the lid; push the power button. Lights on the control panel turns a bright red. Then you choose white rice. That may sound like an odd selection for legumes, but it’s what comes up when I try that setting. Press go, and the machine heats up.
And then, you don’t need to babysit. Just let the machine do its thing. About an hour later. Give or take, you’ll be done. While the machine cooks away, you can get up to your other work.
It’s easy to see where the thing is at: four little dots and the red lights tells me how far along things are. There’s no guessing what stage it’s in; you know that the thing will be done in a certain amount of time and you don’t have to stir it or anything, you simply leave it alone until it’s ready.
Then the thing tells you that it’s ready and you remove the lid. The lentils are completely cooked and tender; they’ve taken in all of the water niceley.
The texture is soft but not disintegrated, which makes them suitable for eating as is or adding to a stew.
They’re tender without being mushy, good enough to eat out of hand or tossed in some kind of stew.
I like that it’s a hands-off approach that saves time and effort because you do not need a separate pot on the stove. It takes less time and effort.
I measure out some lentils, put them in the pot, rinse them, add water, push a button, then wait for the white rice setting to finish doing its thing. It’s as good as expected. The 50 minute timer isn’t too far off, so you know what to expect next time around.
It couldn’t of been easier. No weird extra steps required.
It doesn’t require any guesswork; you’re just applying basic cooking principles correctly, and the machine takes care of everything else. There’s no chance of anything boiling over or burning; you just set it down, and it works.