[Living Alone] Don't you think you don't need a rice cooker or a toaster if you have a stove? ~ The theory that cooking appliances are just toys

My kitchen renovation is finally complete, and for the first time in a year, I'm living a healthy and civilized life.

This is Usatosan.

While I still use a microwave and an electric kettle, I've stopped using other cooking appliances. Or rather, in terms of both taste and effort, rice cookers and toasters have started to seem like toys to me. I'd like to write about that.

However, please keep in mind that if you ask me if I'm cooking a lot, the answer is not really. Actually, maybe it's fine to have just this much since I don't cook that often anyway.

I had never cooked rice in a rice cooker since I started living alone.

For about a year after moving and before renovating the kitchen, I had zero motivation to cook, so I never used the stove and almost exclusively used the microwave. Plus, I had already thrown away the rice cooker and toaster I didn't use at my previous place. As for the rice cooker, I threw it away after five years without ever cooking rice in it. I did occasionally make things like roast pork on a whim, though. I didn't eat rice at home in the first place, but recently, after going through a phase of wanting rice and eating pre-packaged rice, I finally started cooking rice at home, but I didn't end up buying a rice cooker and am cooking it in an earthenware pot instead.

I mean, this is enough for anyone starting to live alone who isn't sure if they'll cook rice or not, right? It's easy on the wallet and space, and it can also be used as a regular pot.

I'm cooking rice now, but I divide 2 cups into 7 servings, eat one serving as is, and wrap the other 6 in plastic wrap and freeze them in containers, so I only use the pot for rice twice a week. However, since I'm using it for hot pot, at least now in winter, I'm using it every day.

As a result of upgrading my cooking utensils, I mostly use the stove now. However, because I had so little motivation to cook at the time of the renovation, I didn't get a stove with a timer and chose the lowest-ranked one (it was about 17,000 yen at the home center...), so it might be a bit of a hassle that it doesn't turn off the fire automatically. But since the way you heat things determines how delicious the food is, I feel like cooking in an earthenware pot is tastier than in a rice cooker because of that subtle difference. That said, if you ask if it's a huge hassle, modern pots are easy to use, so even though I have to light the stove myself after soaking the rice and set a 10-minute timer to turn off the fire myself, you only ever need 10 minutes to cook rice, or 12 minutes for mixed rice, and you don't really need to adjust the heat.

And what about toast...

It's definitely tastier when grilled in a frying pan, and you can even grill it in a fish grill.

Even when I'm not making French toast, I like bread grilled in butter, and the reason I stopped using the toaster I bought when I started living alone after about two years is that it's definitely tastier when grilled in a frying pan, just as it looks. You might say, 'Who has time to grill in a frying pan in the morning!', but I've always been a morning person who is slow to wake up, and what I was doing while the toast was grilling was just making coffee and zoning out, so the only difference is whether I'm standing in front of the frying pan or sitting and waiting for it to grill lol

So, I recently bought a Banko-yaki grill pan plate. When I'm not butter-grilling toast, I put this in the fish grill.

This one will burn if you're not careful (that's the same for a toaster), but it feels no different from a toaster, and it's easy to wash and cooks quickly, so it's convenient. (I don't wash it when I use it for bread without oil or moisture... that might be bad, though)

As far as I can tell from the manual, it seems better to preheat it if you're grilling on one side, but I use it for 2 minutes, then flip it and grill for another 2 minutes. Honestly, my parents' house used to use the fish grill, but by the time I noticed, they had stopped using it because cleaning it was a pain, and with that image in mind, I didn't use the grill at my previous house either, so I bought a cheap single-sided grill. Now I'm thinking I should have gotten a double-sided one.

As for meat, I didn't keep track of the time the other day and overcooked it, but you can cook sausages and vegetables, and of course, you can grill fish too.

Plus, even when you grill fish, it's super easy because it doesn't get that dirty if you just wash the plate.

I thought it would be better to have a lid, so I bought one with a lid, but currently, I often use it without the lid. That's something that needs more research, though.

What's worth noting is the taste. It's actually quite delicious.

I've come to think that a toaster is just a toy after all. It's just tastier to use an actual flame. There might be a theory that Banko ware is better. (Incidentally, both the clay pot and this plate are Banko ware.)

Do kitchen appliances aspire to be real flames?

The reason I thought about using the grill I hadn't been using as a substitute for a toaster is that when I happened to be watching a construction-related YouTube channel, there was a discussion about the gas vs. IH debate, where it was said that electric cooking appliances aspire to be real flames. They said things like, 'Rice cookers claim to use direct flame or whatever, but if that's the case, why not just use a real flame with gas?' After hearing that and thinking about how it's not much trouble to cook rice in a clay pot, I watched it and thought, 'Ah, I see.'

The Hario clay pot was 4,000 yen at the end of the year when I bought it, and although there is price instability on Amazon where it went up to 7,000 yen for a while in January and is 5,400 yen today, even if you buy it with the grill plate, it doesn't even cost 10,000 yen. I think it might be much better in terms of cost-performance than choosing an expensive rice cooker at any given time.

That said, I know there are people who find it difficult to ensure they turn off the flame, and my younger sister, who was scolded by our parents for leaving the stove on when we lived at home, chose an IH stove without hesitation, so I think that type of person is fine with kitchen appliances.
(By the way, regarding the gas vs. IH debate, I've hardly ever used an IH stove, so I'll leave aside the discussion of how IH is.)

But you know, it's not just about cost-performance,

it's actually faster and tastier than kitchen appliances.

Or rather, since I used them as a matter of course at my parents' house, I thought that was the norm, but the reason for that might be that I 'didn't know' that pots themselves have been evolving, and also that they were 'hard to get.' (At least at the home center I always go to, the clay pot and plate I bought are not sold there now. The clay pot was sold for a while, but I missed out on it because I was waiting until after my kitchen renovation, so I bought it on Amazon.)

And the background to the spread of home appliances probably includes the marketing power of appliance manufacturers, the fact that pots at the time weren't as high-performance as they are now, and above all,

if you're going to let children use them, safe toys are better.

I still think that's true even now.
If you're living alone, this is fine, but if you have children, I think you'd end up thinking that a toaster or rice cooker is something even children can operate. And when those children grow up, that becomes the norm for them.

This is somewhat related to what I wrote a long time ago when I stopped using Teflon frying pans and switched to stainless steel ones. My way of using frying pans, having used Teflon since I was in elementary school, was quite sloppy, but if you know how, they won't burn, and while the cooking time itself doesn't change, things cooked with proper technique taste better.

And in the case of a stainless steel frying pan, you have to heat it up sufficiently before adding oil, but even my cheap stove at home automatically beeps and lowers the heat at the right temperature, so if you actually know that, it's not much trouble at all. (By the way, for Teflon, you add oil first; for stainless steel, you add oil later.)

Items that you can use somehow without knowing them properly are convenient, but if you're asking if they are incredibly delicious, it's tastier to use the real thing to the extent that it's not difficult, and if we're talking about being as comfortable as the convenient ones, there are only one or two things you need to know about any item, and by doing those one or two things properly, the taste and texture become much more decent.

It's a tricky point for families with children, but if only adults live there, I recently realized that you should just use the real thing.

It also saves space.

Just not needing a toaster and a rice cooker makes the kitchen area quite tidy.
The clay pot can be stored in a pot rack, and in fact, I don't just use it to cook rice, I also use it for one-person hot pot meals, and after I wash and dry the grill plate, I set it inside the grill.
I'm not saying you should throw away what you're using right now, but I think it's a good idea to consider it when you start living alone or when your current appliances break.

You might say that if I'm going that far, I should boil water with a kettle, but I want to make coffee without the time to boil it, so, it can't be helped.