He’s Knocking on My Door

Tag: Rice

  • Easy Low-Sodium Yellow Rice in the Rice Cooker

    Easy Low-Sodium Yellow Rice in the Rice Cooker

    This has become one of our favorite easy side dishes.

    We originally found this Yellow Rice in a Rice Cooker recipe from I Heart Vegetables, and it’s good, simple and incredibly easy to make.

    Original Yellow Rice Recipe from I Heart Vegetables

    And when I say easy, I mean easy.

    Rinse the rice, put everything in the rice cooker, push the button and basically forget about it.

    About 20 minutes later, you have a flavorful yellow rice that works as a side dish or as the base for a meal. The original recipe lists about 5 minutes of prep and 15 minutes of cooking time. 

    How We Make It Lower in Sodium

    The original recipe uses vegetable broth and mentions Better Than Bouillon vegetable base as the author’s choice. 

    That’s where we make our biggest change.

    Instead, we use Kitchen Basics Unsalted Vegetable Stock. Walmart currently lists it as having no added salt. 

    Kitchen Basics Unsalted Vegetable Stock at Walmart

    The carton we use lists 75 mg of sodium per cup. Since the recipe requires two cups, that’s about:

    75 mg × 2 cups = 150 mg of sodium

    That’s roughly 150 mg of sodium from the stock in the entire batch of rice, not per serving.

    We also leave out the additional salt called for in the original recipe.

    Of course, the exact sodium in your finished rice depends on the specific brands and ingredients you use, so always check your own labels.

    Our Version

    For our lower-sodium version, we use:

    • 1 cup white rice
    • 2 cups no-salt-added vegetable stock
    • 1 teaspoon ground turmeric
    • 1/2 teaspoon onion powder
    • 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
    • We omit the salt

    The ingredient proportions, other than our stock substitution and omission of added salt, come from the original I Heart Vegetables recipe. 

    I rinse the rice, put everything into the rice cooker, give it a stir and start the normal white-rice cycle.

    That’s about it.

    When it’s finished, fluff it with a fork and serve.

    Quick. Easy. And very little cleanup.

    This Is Why I Love the Rice Cooker

    This recipe is a perfect example of why we bought our rice cooker in the first place.

    There’s no standing over the stove watching a pot.

    There’s no wondering whether the rice is done.

    I put everything in, start it and move on to whatever else we’re making.

    The rice cooker handles the rest.

    And the rice comes out consistently good.

    Why We Finally Bought a Rice Cooker

    Don’t Forget About Serving Size

    Here’s where I’m going to sound like a broken record.

    Just because I reduced the sodium doesn’t mean I should sit down and eat the entire rice cooker.

    Low sodium doesn’t mean unlimited.

    Rice still contains carbohydrates, so portion size matters to me for reasons beyond sodium.

    It’s also exactly why I wrote my article about reading nutrition labels.

    You can’t look at one number on a label and decide whether something works for you. You have to consider the serving size and the amount you’re actually going to eat.

    ❤️ Greg’s Take

    This is exactly the kind of recipe I’ve been looking for since changing the way I eat.

    I don’t necessarily need to reinvent every recipe.

    Sometimes I just need to find the ingredient that’s causing me trouble and replace it with something that works better for me.

    In this case, swapping the vegetable bouillon/broth for an unsalted vegetable stock and skipping the additional salt gives us a version that fits much better into the way we’re eating now.

    And I don’t feel like I’m eating bland “diet food.”

    It’s yellow rice.

    It’s flavorful.

    It goes with a ton of different meals.

    And the rice cooker does almost all the work.

    Drop it in. Push the button. Go make the rest of dinner.

    That’s my kind of recipe.

    Recipe Credit

    This recipe is adapted from I Heart Vegetables — How to Make Yellow Rice in a Rice Cooker. I use their recipe as the starting point and modify it to reduce the sodium by using unsalted vegetable stock and omitting the added salt.

    View the Original Recipe at I Heart Vegetables

    Disclaimer: This article reflects my personal experience with low-sodium cooking and the modifications I make to recipes while living with chronic illness. It is not medical or nutritional advice. Sodium needs can vary from person to person, so always check ingredient labels and follow the guidance of your own doctor, dietitian, or healthcare team. Product ingredients and nutrition information can also change over time.

  • Why We Finally Bought a Rice Cooker

    Why We Finally Bought a Rice Cooker

    Sometimes the best helpful finds aren’t complicated.

    They’re just things that make everyday life a little easier.

    We eat quite a bit of rice in our house. Since I’ve been following a low-sodium diet, rice has become an easy base for a lot of the meals we make at home.

    Plain rice is naturally very low in sodium as long as you’re not adding salt, salty broth, or other high-sodium ingredients while cooking it.

    There’s just one problem.

    You still have to cook it.

    Making rice on the stove certainly isn’t difficult, but you have to watch it, get the water-to-rice ratio right, make sure it doesn’t overcook, and hopefully end up with rice that’s neither crunchy nor mushy.

    Eventually we decided there had to be an easier way.

    So we bought a rice cooker.

    And I’m glad we did.

    Set It and Forget It

    The biggest reason we bought a rice cooker was convenience.

    Put in the rice and water, turn it on, and let the machine take care of the rest.

    There’s no standing over the stove or wondering whether I should turn the heat down.

    Set it and forget it.

    Once the rice is finished, our cooker automatically switches to a keep-warm mode. That means we don’t have to perfectly coordinate the rice with everything else we’re cooking for dinner.

    That may seem like a small thing, but when you’re preparing several things at once, having one less pot to worry about is pretty nice.

    The Rice Comes Out Right

    This might be my favorite part.

    The rice comes out consistently good.

    I’ve made plenty of rice on the stove that was still a little hard when dinner was ready. I’ve also gone the other direction and cooked it too long.

    With the rice cooker, there’s much less guesswork.

    Put everything in, start it, and when it’s finished, we have rice ready for dinner.

    Brown Rice, White Rice and Carbohydrates

    We make both white and brown rice.

    I’ve been using brown rice quite a bit because it provides more fiber than white rice. But that doesn’t mean we’ve eliminated white rice. We still enjoy both depending on what we’re making.

    For me, the bigger consideration is portion size.

    Rice may fit nicely into my low-sodium diet, but it still contains a significant amount of carbohydrates. Because I also have diabetes, I have to pay attention to how much rice I put on my plate.

    That’s an important distinction I’ve learned along the way:

    Low sodium doesn’t automatically mean something is unlimited.

    A food can work very well for one part of my diet while still requiring some thought because of another health condition.

    So I enjoy my rice.

    I just don’t fill half my plate with it.

    Great for the Meals We Make at Home

    Rice has become the base for quite a few meals around here.

    The steak and shrimp rice bowls I recently mentioned in my Daily Journal are a perfect example. We can control the seasoning on the steak, choose our vegetables, pay attention to the sodium in the shrimp, and serve everything over a measured portion of rice.

    I’ll be sharing my version of that recipe on the site soon.

    That’s the kind of cooking I’ve been trying to embrace.

    Instead of focusing entirely on foods I can’t have anymore, I’m finding meals we enjoy and figuring out how to make them work for me.

    The rice cooker simply makes that easier.

    It Doesn’t Take Over the Kitchen

    Another thing I like about rice cookers is that you don’t need a giant appliance.

    They come in several different capacities, so you can choose one based on how much rice you normally make.

    We went with a medium-sized model, which gives us enough capacity without taking up a ridiculous amount of counter or cabinet space.

    If kitchen storage is limited, that’s worth considering.

    Cleanup Takes Almost No Time

    Convenience doesn’t mean much to me if an appliance takes forever to clean.

    Fortunately, ours doesn’t.

    The cooking pot has a nonstick interior, so cleanup is extremely easy. Once we’re finished, it takes very little time to clean the pot and have it ready for the next meal.

    Simple to use.

    Simple to clean.

    And consistently good rice.

    That’s pretty much what I wanted.

    ❤️ Greg’s Take

    Do you absolutely need a rice cooker?

    Of course not.

    You can make perfectly good rice on the stove.

    But that’s not really why I bought one.

    I bought it because it makes life easier.

    Living with chronic illness has made me appreciate things that save a little time and effort. If an appliance can take one job off my plate while we’re making dinner, that’s valuable to me.

    I can put the rice on, walk away, and concentrate on preparing everything else—or just sit down until I need to do something again.

    When dinner is ready, the rice is ready.

    And it’s cooked right.

    Sometimes a Helpful Find doesn’t have to change your life.

    Sometimes it just has to make one little part of it easier.

    The Rice Cooker I Use

    If you’d like to see the rice cooker we purchased, you can find it here:

    See the rice cooker I use on Amazon

    There are different sizes available, so I’d choose the capacity that makes sense for the amount of rice you normally prepare rather than automatically buying the largest one.

    Affiliate Disclosure: This post contains an affiliate link. If you purchase something through my link, I may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. I only share products that I personally use or believe may be helpful.

    Health Disclaimer: I’m sharing my personal experience and how rice fits into my own eating plan. This is not medical or nutritional advice. Rice is a carbohydrate-containing food and can affect blood glucose. If you have diabetes or another condition requiring dietary management, work with your healthcare provider or dietitian to determine the types and portions of foods that are appropriate for you. Always check nutrition labels and ingredients, particularly on seasoned or prepared rice products.