When it comes to cooking for my baby, I always go by this motto: the lesser effort the better!

That’s why I’ve been exploring my rice cooker, to see if I can come up with easy one-pot, nutritious recipes that don’t even need the stove.

And I think this is a keeper: rice cooker mac and cheese!

It helps too, that the husband is a huge fan of mac and cheese. With this recipe, I can settle dinner for the family all at once. This means more time to shower (I hope) and blog too?

This dish takes all of 25 minutes to cook. Prep time is about 10 minutes with a nifty kitchen tool. If you’ve liked my Facebook page, you’ll know that I swear by this hand-held chopper:

If you hate to chop ingredients by hand and find the food processor too troublesome to use with too many parts to wash, get this. It is saving me so much time in the kitchen, and it’s great when I want to make pasta sauce, or chop vegetables quickly for cbb’s meals. The best thing is: it’s not flimsy! I even use it to mince chicken fillet. I got mine from ezbuy prime (search for the Chinese words). I’ve seen it in Isetan too.

In a nutshell, the recipe goes like this: place macaroni and water in rice cooker, top with chopped broccoli, pumpkin and minced meat, then cover and cook for 20 minutes. Open the rice cooker, and stir in the milk + cooking cream, a smidgen of honey mustard and shredded cheese. Cover for another 5 minutes and serve. That’s it. Crazy right?

I wanted the recipe to be a bit healthier, so I used half-and-half, i.e., 30ml fresh milk and 30ml cooking cream. If you want an even lower fat content, go ahead and use 60ml fresh milk. But it won’t be as creamy or decadent.

TIP: For a creamier and more delicious dish, use 60ml cooking cream. I mean, what difference can 30ml make, right?

Ready for the recipe that will change your life? Let’s go! I’m giving food ingredient measurements in tablespoons, because that’s the easiest to gauge. Leftovers can be mixed with crushed cream crackers and made into meat patties!

If you’re interested to know, I’m using the Tefal spherical rice cooker. Click on the link to see my recipe for mushroom and chicken multi-grain one-pot rice.

I get all my vegetables from OPENTASTE.SG. Get $15 off your first order by entering code ‘240D2E’ at checkout.

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The post Toddler-worthy rice cooker mac and cheese appeared first on Budgetpantry | Singapore Mummy Blog on Food, Recipe & Baby.

I love pumpkin rice! Whenever I order 老火汤, I always ask for pumpkin rice instead of white rice. Their pumpkin rice is really basic, just pumpkin steamed with rice I think, but I always finish the entire bowl even if I try to avoid carbs as much as I can. Imagine what will happen if I cook my own version which is chock full of ingredients? One month no need to eat rice! *faint*

My version of pumpkin rice is similar to those Hokkien version that some stalls still sell today. I like to add sliced shallots to enhance the fragrance, and loads of Chinese mushrooms, dried shrimp and shredded chicken so you get all the wholesome goodness in one pot.

When I first said that I will be cooking pumpkin rice for Saturday’s lunch, the husband made a face (don’t think I didn’t see it!) and said pumpkins are strange (don’t ask). I was so confident that he will love it that I told him, “You just wait and see.” 你等着瞧吧你! Come on, he is a yam cake, chwee kueh, carrot cake, glutinous rice, yam rice person.. how could he not love my pumpkin rice? Just not possible.

And indeed, when I was done cooking, I kay-siao told him to try one mouthful as a ‘test-drive’. He ended up eating two large bowls before we went out and kept wishing that the aunts wouldn’t finish the rest, so that there will still be some leftover for his supper!

This recipe is pretty simple. Basically, just fry shallots, mushrooms, dried shrimps, for a few minutes before adding uncooked pumpkin and cooked shredded chicken along with the seasonings. Add the uncooked rice grains, dry-fry til everything is coated with the sauce, then transfer everything to the rice cooker to let it do the work. I used shredded chicken for this (boil chicken fillet or chicken breast til cooked, then shred by hand) instead of chicken pieces or roasted pork and I loved it. Don’t use bite-sized chicken pieces for this.. I don’t think it’ll be as good, but roast pork is always yummy.

This is similar to my yam rice recipe but I made some ingredients and proportion changes. Note that because it is easy for pumpkin to turn mushy, we can’t add too much water to the rice. I simply let the water level come up to the same level as the rice and that’s it.

Oh and one pointer about rehydrating dried Chinese mushrooms: Always soak your mushrooms in room temperature water instead of hot water. Mushrooms soaked in hot water are less flavourful than those soaked in room temperature water. Using hot water takes less time, yes, but doing so extracts the flavour of the mushrooms *from* the mushrooms straight into the soaking water. Thekitchn.com did an experiment to compare.. you might be interested to read about it. Something new for most people?

I love how easy it is to put this together.. I think this is almost fool-proof. Have fun trying this! :)

The post Traditional Pumpkin Rice 南瓜饭 appeared first on Budgetpantry | Singapore Mummy Blog on Food, Recipe & Baby.