steams good to me

I think I've mentioned this before but for my birthday my Dad bought me a Steamer and a Bread Maker.

I was pretty much straight into using the bread maker, but the steamer hasn't really seen much action until recently because, with it being summer, I didn't really feel like eating the sort of food you cook in a steamer.

The steamer is quite a good one, I believe - it certainly has a big capacity and is a good brand, but it's taken me quite a while to really figure it out properly. The main problems I've been having are cooking times and cleaning it.

Cooking times have been a problem because the guidelines given in the booklet seem to be way too short. I dunno if it's because I like my food well cooked or something, but if I use the booklet's cooking time, everything seems to come out almost raw :/.

About the only thing it seems to get right is chicken. Everything else is totally undercooked for me.

This is especially true for rice, but then to be fair I already know that what is nicely cooked rice for me is massively over-done by other people's standards. I mean, in the book I think it says as little as 15 minutes, but I actually cook it for about 40 minutes.

As I say, that's more because I like rice that's verging on mushy in consistency, but still, at 15 minutes I think most people would say the rice was underdone.

The cleaning problem is more tricky.

The basic issue is that when I cook chicken it drips juices and these juices seem to coagulate in the holes the steam comes through. The problems is that no amount of soaking and scrubbing seems to dislodge this gunk.

I'm not too fussed, as I'm sure the steam kills any germs, but it looks really unsightly to say the least.

Sorry, this was a bit of a naff post, wasn't it? It's because I couldn't really think of anything to talk about that wasn't going to become a marathon post and I'm really busy at work.