Beth Hensperger and Julie Kaufmann's The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook offers 250 timesaving, convenient, and healthy recipes for making everything from simple white rice to full-course meals. This cookbook proves the rice cooker--which tends to have a bad rap as a never-opened or oft-neglected wedding gift--can be surprisingly versatile: not only does it prepare your rice, it can be used for every dinner course--salad, soup, vegetable, entree, and even dessert.

There is a complete buying and cooking guide for the many rice varieties, as well as other whole grains such as barley, millet, wheat berry, and quinoa. Many of the recipes provide convenient alternative cooking methods for traditional dishes like Italian risottos (the Italian Sausage Risotto is wonderful). Hensperger and Kaufmann show the rice cooker can also work miracles for hot breakfast cereals and porridges with such recipes as Hot Fruited Oatmeal. Delightful main courses include Steamed Ginger Salmon and Asparagus in Black Bean Sauce, and the meal is done almost exclusively within the rice cooker for simple preparation and cleanup. The dessert section has many ideas beyond the expected Old-Fashioned Rice Pudding--the Poached Pears with Grand Marnier Custard Sauce is one elegant and sophisticated example. Both authors of this cookbook are seasoned food writers and this combined effort gives tasty, easy, and healthy recipes that will motivate you to use what has been, until now, an underutilized appliance. --Teresa Simanton

The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook proves there’s more to this popular appliance than a convenient way to cook a pot of rice. Complete with tips on buying and using a rice cooker, as well as selecting and preparing every kind of rice, grain, and dried bean, this book includes 250 recipes for everything from hot breakfast cereals and creamy desserts and puddings to classic vegetable, bean, and rice combinations and savory whole meal cuisines.

I borrowed this book from a friend and loved it so much that I'm going to buy it from Amazon, but I noticed that many people have left reviews saying that some recipes leave lingering aromas in their cookers. With that in mind, I'd like to leave some helpful advice for people who are planning on making "aromatic" recipes in their cookers:

To rid your cooker of most smells, put a little bit of baking powder in the bottom (1 or 2 tbsp. I think) and about 1-2 inches of warm water. Leave it for a few minutes, wash the sides with the baking powder mixture (just to be sure you got all the smelly parts :D) and then wash normally.

I know this doesn't directly pertain to the book, but I hope it helps.

This rice cooker cookbook is an absolute essential in my kitchen. I have the Zojirushi NP-HBC18 10-Cup Rice Cooker and Warmer with Induction Heating System, Stainless Steel and adore it. I have found the cookbook to be right on target and have tried many of the rice recipes. My Italian husband says it makes good polenta. And the bean recipes are good too. You can't go wrong with this book.

The cookbook is alright... it could be better. I don't really know what to say about it, its okay, but I'm not thrilled.

This is an extremely well written cookbook with information on rice, beans, lentils etc that I never knew. Loads of recipies I want to try. It is an excellent resouce. I cannot imagine owning a rice cooker and not having this book.

I bought this book looking to expand my range of recipes for my rice cooker. What I got was a book that did nothing to excite my palate. The recipes mainly seemed to focus on Asian cuisine. I hate to tell them but rice is consumed in other parts of the world. Beside that the actual typeset of the book makes it very hard to read. The paper is an off white on which they used a grey ink for the main text with the highlighted portions in a pale orange. If I even attempt to make any of these recipes I will be surprised.