Tonight’s dinner is dumpling rice which is actually made in the rice cooker. In a lot of ways it is a cross between bibimbap and fried rice except you throw everything into the rice cooker and walk away. And then when that is done, you can either fry or poaching an egg or two to put on top.

You can really mix-and-match whatever goes into it. It really is going to take me longer to describe how to make it that it does to put it together.

You start off by a washing and rinsing 2 cups of calrose rice and use the finger method to add the water to cook in. Now at this point you can either start off with water or use broth to cook the rice in. I used water in this case and added some better than bouillon roasted chicken flavor and that became my base broth.

To the broth and rice you add shoyu (soy sauce), garlic, ginger, black pepper… Really any kind of Asian aromatics that you want to like lemongrass or even chilies. Sesame seeds are also good I always add minced green onion — the bottom section and I save a little bit of the top for garnish afterwards.

Mix that all up thoroughly and at that point you can add any vegetables that you want to. Just be sure not to add a huge amount because it does need room to steam but you can add sliced mushrooms, bok choy, really any kind of cabbage or greens, even sliced eggplant if you want. Or frozen vegetables. What you want to do is make sure that it isn’t so dense that it can’t cook so if you do add cabbage or anything with a thick stem, please be sure to spread it out.

Once that is done, you add whatever dumpling you have. In this case I had pork gyoza but any kind of dumpling will do. You can also add a protein like shrimp or tofu or scallops. You can also use frozen fish balls or imitation crab — even Spam.

What is really important is that you choose a protein that is slender enough to steam quickly because it is too thick then you end up with raw meat — not something you want if you are using chicken or pork. Shrimp will always be a good option as is tofu. Your dumpling choice really can be anything. This is also a dish you can make totally vegan.

Now put the lid on the rice cooker and hit the cook button. Make sure the keep warm function is on if it is separate from your cook function. What you want to do is let the rice cooker go through its cook function and then let it keep warm and steam for 20 to 30 minutes afterwards so everything is cooked through.

After everything is cooked and you are done with the steaming time, you can carefully scoop out the finished dish from the cooker and topped with a fried or poached egg if you want.

Finish it off with a drizzle of sesame seed oil and shoyu if you like. Garnish with the rest of the minced green onions and really you can add any other kind of sauce you want or sliced chilies or chili oil if you want to punch.

It takes less than five minutes to pull this all together and put into the rice cooker. It is a walk away kind of dish and really something delicious to make but don’t want to spend a lot of time cooking. I usually make 2 cups of rice and layer everything on which gives me two servings. It is definitely enough for two people to eat for dinner or one person for dinner and then leftovers take for lunch.

I do not recommend cooking an egg in this dish or rather inside of the rice cooker if you do not have a Teflon coated rice cooker — which I do not because my rice cooker is old-school and really could use a good scrubbing. If you have a Teflon rice cooker then you can actually crack a couple of eggs on top either in the beginning or right before it goes into the keep warm stage. If your rice cooker is not Teflon coated then it is a bitch and a half to get clean because the egg just bakes onto the pot.

I do also prefer the egg to be fried because you get that crispy texture on the edges and I also really like the runny yolk.