The Trader Joe's Product Discussion Thread (S/D)

Tried the veg. orange chicken this week and found it to be flavorful but the consistency was kinda unexpectedly...soft/mushy? Can someone advise on how best to cook these so they crisp up on the outside a little? (I sauteed in pan w/ sauce packets, stir-fried w/ broccoli....)

Bake it on a cookie sheet.

my new lazyman rice trick is: put lots of rice in cooker, unplug it when done, feel free to add a little more water and plug back in as long as it's less than 24 hours later

I didn't admit to this and will not acknowledge this post in the future

also, yeah, baking is the only way to get the orange chicken to warm to the correct consistency

hahaha

thank you both

Just seems kinda weird baking Chinese food I dunno. But so is the whole thing, so.

Pro tip:
Cover the cookie sheet w/ foil and spray that with cooking spray. No stick easy cleanup.

ya'll have me intrigued as to this orange chicken

Precooked rice is for people eating a cheaper, semi-DIY lunch at work where you only have a microwave, which around here I suspect is a very large percentage of Trader Joe's customers.

the plant I used to work at had two large rice cookers going every day for lunch!

I bought rice at TJ that was not only pre-cooked but SHELF STABLE.

Though I recognized it as a shameful moment for me, given my level of not-busyness, I would not begrudge others - especially single parents - ultra convenient foods.

I always thought the nonfrozen precooked rice was for camping or fallout shelter stocking or something

Iirc rice is the number one carrier of food poisoning, so ignore mh!

really?? sometimes i leave rice in the rice pot for a day or two. setting: keep warm. this is bad? i thought this was quite normal

Idk I could be making it up, but I heard it somewhere and now I reheat rice thoroughly. I guess an't be that bad if neither of you have gotten sick.

really? I mean, I guess the fact that it's at a bacteria-friendly temp for so long could do that, but I actually make it return to boiling temp before eating again. Of course, then the rice turns into a formless slurry after you do this more than twice, so... uh, yeah.

baking the orange chicken might seem odd, but remember that you are NOT making chinese food: you are heating prepackaged chinese-style food that has a fried-esque coating.

anecdotal evidence is kind of b.s., it's true until we DO get sick

Food safety aside, it seems like it might be bad to leave a small appliance on and unattended or only occasionally attended for a day or two.

meh, a rice cooker is basically a crock pot

I wouldn't leave a crock pot on for a day or two, either!

what about just like 12 hours?

Which...is how long you're supposed to leave a slow-cooker on for. Roughly. Anywhere from like 4-12 hours, so....

I am probably too paranoid to leave a slow cooker on while I'm at work, which I know defeats the purpose but our drier caught on fire about a year ago and I'm still jumpy about appliance-related fire safety. But I definitely wouldn't exceed the manufacturer's recommendations on a slow cooker.

ALSO a rice cooker is not a slow cooker, so what might be considered safe for a slow cooker might not be considered safe for a rice cooker.

a rice cooker, once it hits the target temperature, clicks into warming mode that is actually lower than the higher settings on a crock pot

You will never convince me, but I will stop trying to convert you to my Safety First worldview. Leave it on for weeks! Use it in the shower! Live on the edge.

If I have extra rice I put it in the fridge and microwave it when I want to eat it again. (Don't own a rice cooker, seems superfluous).

nickn otm; you all with your rice cookers must have lots of counter space.

hmm. i feel like 99% of the korean families around me growing up left rice in the cooker w/o worrying about fire hazards or food safety and i have continued this great tradition.

tbh I put it in the fridge and microwave most of the time

the korean standpoint leads me to believe you can leave it going, unless you have a fan going and the windows are closed, in which case everyone dies

i was pretty dubious about rice cookers, but i came to believe they had value and now that i have one i really appreciate it. the automation is the thing that makes it indispensable (or at least really useful) for me. i gave up on non-quick-cook rice ages ago b/c i always forgot about it and it burned.

besides being dummy-proof, i like that it has a basket for steaming vegetables, etc. also very nice: throwing some spinach or meat or whatever in with the rice so you have jazzed up rice for later meals.

i cook large batches of rice and then divvy them up into zip lock bags, which i freeze and microwave later.

i do this w/ a lot of foods, actually: bacon (i bake a couple packages), pasta, pasta sauce, chicken, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacillus_cereus

a rice cooker costs like $12

I have used the micro-bags of brown rice to eat with the TJ's cheapo indian box food that doesn't have rice already in it. It still works out to like $3 for lunch.

the frozen palak paneer is maybe the best thing ever (also, the full tray is like 3/4 of your daily sodium intake)

this is one of those times where it's kinda hard to justify posting bc it's so vague but: yeah apparently reheating rice is bad, someone explained it to me once and said the rice wear little jackets and they disappear during cooking & it's bad to eat rice that doesn't have its protective jacket on, unless you just cooked it. like hopefully someone will swoop in with some real science, but apparently it's bad. i still reheat rice sometimes, risotto especially, because there are lots of things that are 'bad' that don't have noticeable or immediate ill-effects, or like you shouldn't use a metal spoon to stir something because it conducts heat but it isn't like your spoon/pan is particularly efficient anyway so it's fine. but just so you know, even though you don't because i didn't prove anything, i just remembered, at you, apparently rice is bad to reheat

I eat reheated rice all the time

Me, too. Am I going to die?

maybe we already have

yeah it looks like if it drops below 140 degrees, it is bad. I am thinking that having the rice cooker constantly on makes it stay at a good temp

if you are a moron like me and reheat it, you will likely get food poisoning. I credit my past prodigious liquor consumption for a lack of poisoning

Us rice reheaters must just be ticking time bombs.

Well, I have better historical luck avoiding food poisoning from reheated rice than I do avoiding fires due to household appliances, so I'm going to stick with the reheating method.

For the veg/fake orange chicken, bake them in a toaster oven, then remove and finish them off in a pan for two minutes with the sauce and a small amount of grapeseed or vegetable oil. Probably works with the regular too although I haven't had it yet.

Spencer bringing the wise decisions

That's exactly what I do - bake it in the toaster oven first. Sisters.

Jar of speculoos paste is fucking silly.
It's like DIY Nutter Butter...out of anything.

Also: what do I do with this coconut oil?

rub it on your skin and hair

good for popping popcorn with xp