Morphy Richards 48744 RICE Cooker

A few months ago I read a review about a rice cooker and thought that, yes I could do with one of them. I settled on the Morphy Richards 48744 as to be honest that was the only one offered on the fact finders website and I thought I would use up some of my points.

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The Rice and Pasta cooker is a mirrored silver colour with black handles with a toughened glass lid with a black handle and a steam hole. The cooker is 21 cm high without lid or 24cm with the lid and 28cm in diameter plus handles makes it 36cm. The cable is 90cm long. It fits nicely into one of my top wall mounted kitchen cabinets if the lid is turned upside down. The cooker is supplied with a pasta cooking pad, which is like a round piece of clear/white rubber with holes in it, a plastic measuring beaker and a small plastic white spatula. Inside the machine is a large 1.8 litre cooking bowl made of metal covered with a black Tefal non stick coating with a chart that tells you how much water you need. Under the cooking bowl are the electrical workings along with a spring mechanism. On the front of the machine is a small pad type area with a switch, that is either warm or cook. The box also includes a good clear instruction booklet for cooking rice and pasta along with 2 pasta recipes and 5 rice recipes.
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Using the Machine
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Cooking Rice

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The machine is very easy to use, pour in the amount of rice (rinsed in cold water until the water runs clear), add the required amount of cold water using the marking inside the bowl and the measuring beaker, cover with the lid, switch the machine on and press the cook button, when you switch the machine on it automatically turns onto warm and an amber light shows, when you switch to cook a red light comes on. The machine knows when your rice is cooked by measuring the temperature and weight of the food using the spring mechanism and automatically switches onto warm and stays on warm for either 2 hours or until you switch the machine off at the socket. On certain types of rice, a crust can form at the bottom of the machine but if you wipe the machine over with a little oil it may be prevented.
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Cooking Pasta

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Place the pasta cooking pad into the base of the cooking bowl, pour in the required amount of pasta, fill with the required amount of water, again using the chart and measuring cup, cover with the lid and switch the machine onto cook. Cook for the amount of time it says on the packet plus 10 minutes, at the end of cooking turn the machine onto warm and consume the pasta within 1 hour.
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Caring and cleaning the cooking bowl

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With the cooking bowl having a Tefal covering nothing sticks so you are able to wash the bowl and lid in warm soapy water, although I put my bowl and lid in the dishwasher and I have never had a problem. It is best to use the plastic spatula supplied or another wooden or plastic spoon, do not use metal as this will scratch the non stick surface. One thing I don’t like is the mirrored finish, it always seems to show up finger prints no matter how much you try to clean it.
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Electricity usage

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When the machine is on cook, according to my electricity smart meter is uses about 700 watts and the warm setting uses approx., 40 watts.
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Other information
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The machine comes with a safety cut-out thermal fuse which cuts off the electricity automatically if there is a problem. Each individual cooker is tested before it leaves the Morphy Richards factory and is guaranteed for 2 years.
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My findings

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I have had the machine for a few months now and it has been used a few times to cook rice or pasta. One thing I wish I had have known before I ordered this machine was that the minimum amount of rice that can be cooked is 4 measuring cups full, bearing in mind that the back of my packet of Basmati rice, it recommends about 75 grams per person however the plastic measuring cup holds approx 120 grams of rice, so that works out a very large portion as a side portion or serves a lot more than 4 people. We only have 2 adults and 1 four year old, so we never meet the minimum amount for cooking rice to serve with a curry or chilli. I do use the machine for cooking risottos or birianis, so in that case I use more rice so the machine is suitable. I did once try cooking just two cups of rice but it turned out to be a nightmare, the water just boiled over, lifting the lid and the water went everywhere.
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When I have cooked rice, risottos or birianis the rice is normally cooked in roundabout 18 – 20 minutes. The basmati rice comes out lovely and fluffy and my risottos come out still quite creamy. I was a bit apprehensive when I cooked my first risotto, I normally add you liquid a ladle at a time but the recipe book said to add all the liquid at the same time, the risotto did still come out nice.

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Obviously if you are serving a meat risotto, it doesn’t cook the meat however the recipe says to add cooked meat about 10 minutes into the cooking time or to add the cooked meat when the machine switches onto warm. If I am using chicken left over from Sunday Lunch, I tend to fry it with mushrooms to heat it through properly or boil any vegetables first and then add it to the rice.

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I am quite happy to add tomatoes and herbs and spices and an onion at the beginning of cooking but I like to add the heated meat and leave it on warm for about 20 minutes in the hope that some off the flavourings will sink into the meat.
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The same also happens with pasta portions, the back of a packet recommends 75 grams, the measuring cup holds about 70 grams and the instruction books recommends 2 – 3 cups per person, so once again this is a very large portion although the minimum is, once again 4 cups, so at least this is suitable to use for 2 adults and one child. I did also find that the pasta water boiled over so I just switched to warm and left the pasta in the hot water and it continued to cook to my desired taste.
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One thing I haven’t tried yet is adding a sauce to pasta, I could see this being quite difficult removing the water before adding any sauce.

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I used to cook my rice in the microwave in a rice steamer for 15 minutes using boiled water. So using this machine does actually save me money, not only do I use cold water which saves money not boiling the kettle, my microwave uses about 1.3 kilo watt for 15 minutes and this rice cooker uses about 700 watts for 20 minutes.
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I have also tried cooking a rice pudding but this was a long drawn out process, yes the pudding did cook nicely but I found that it was easy for the milk to boil over so once the milk started to bubble I would put the cooker onto warm for about 5 minutes until the bubbling had stopped, flicked it onto cook again until it bubbled and then warm, quite a few times. This is a dish you need to do whilst working next to the machine and once it is cooked it needs to either be served immediately or put into another bowl as I found when I left it in the cooker for a few minutes it ended up with a brown bottom on my pudding.
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The last dish I cooked was spicy rice and lamb, I dished out my daughters dinner for her to eat but my husband was late in getting home from work, so we had ours about 40 minutes later. The rice was still quite warm, not excessively hot and not excessively cold, but edible, if however you like you food piping hot, you would need to bung it in the microwave for about 1 minute.
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Would I Recommend
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The answer to that is yes and no. No if you have a small family are just two adults in you household, you would never cook about the minimum amount unless you cooked in bulk and divided it into portions and froze what you didn’t use.
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Yes if you have a large family or a family with older children. The cooker would certainly come into its own if you have teenage children who never eat at the same time, you would be able to cook your rice and leave it on warm and then everybody could eat as and when, as long as it is in the two hour period.
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You could also use this machine it you were having a small party with a hot buffet, you could cook your rice and leave it on warm until you are ready to eat.
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I wished I had done a bit more research or maybe checked out a few rice cookers in the shops before I ordered this, I would certainly not have had the machine had I have known that a minimum quantity of 4 cups was required for cooking. I would have certainly been disappointed if I had used my hard earned money on buying this machine, as it was I used my fact finders points so I have only wasted about a years worth of points from scanning my shopping.
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You can buy this product from Amazon for £34.99 or from various other
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I have knocked off one star for the minimum quantities.

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Many thanks for reading, Anna