My Journey from Cooking ‘Bland’ Rice to Cooking ‘Healthy & Delicious’ Rice

I consider myself a healthy cook. I am usually careful about the ingredients I use in my recipes – their nutritional value, effects on health etc. But I was never particularly happy with cooking rice. I am careful in choosing not-overly processed, non-enriched, unbleached rice but it cooks very unevenly and either gets mushy or too dry. This is when I started doing some research on healthy ways to cook soft and fluffy rice. What I found was an eye opener:

The commonly used rice cookers are made of metals and ceramics. I have been using a metal rice cooker. I found out that both metals and ceramics leach toxins into rice while cooking. At cooking temperature, all metals leach ions that react with food, a biochemical entity that consists of water, nutrients, vitamins & minerals, proteins and carbs that are in the form of halogens, acids and bases.

Conventional ceramic cookware made from ceramic clay, porcelain, stoneware and the glazes and enamel used for coating are a composition of different chemicals, oxides, and metals. They leach toxins into food while cooking. Also, the heat from these pots destroys the foods delicate nutrients. Surprised? So was I.

I started looking for alternatives – something that doesn’t leach toxins into food and is not harmful to the nutrients. Luckily, I found a healthy rice cooker that is naturally inert and 100% non-toxic. MEC’s pure-clay™ pots make excellent rice cookers. They are handmade from certified pure-clay without using any chemicals. I did this baking soda test at home to confirm if they are really non-toxic. This is how the test is done:

1. Boil 2-3 cups of water in any pot, when it starts boiling add 2 tsp of baking soda, boil for 5 more mins. Turn stove off.
2. Wait till cool enough to taste then taste the water (take a sip). If you taste metals, that’s what you’re eating! If water has a rubber/paint taste it’s the chemicals from enamel/glaze.
3. As a control, stir 2 tsp of baking soda to 1 glass of water and take a sip — the taste of this water will be very different from that of the pots. And similar to the water boiled in MEC pots.

AND the rice cooks fluffy, soft and each grain separate from the other – that too without using any fats or additives, the pot takes care of everything! The semi-porous breathable pot lets excess moisture evaporate and cooks with a unique far infrared heat that is food-friendly and keeps nutrients intact. MEC’s pure-clay pots are ideal rice cookers. I can now proudly say that I cook healthy and delicious rice, that is not only well cooked but is also free from metal or chemical toxins. Try MEC’s healthy rice cooker yourself and enjoy healthy rice cooking.