Aroma Housewares 20-Cup (10-Cup Uncooked) Digital Rice Cooker & Slow Cooker with Food Steamer - Stainless Steel Exterior (ARC-150SB) - Perfect for Family Dinners, Meal Prep & Healthy Cooking - Black

So you have an Aroma also. I know you might have been eyeing them in a store for a while before purchasing one, staring at their gleaming finish, sleek design and at the list of their promising multi-functions for making a meal quickly and easily, yet perfectly. Maybe you received one for your birthday or other holiday and you stared at it suspiciously wondering if you should even bother. Believe me you will be delighted to know how wonderful Aroma’s are. I will let you in on one of my Aroma secrets, my Souper Soup schema.UPDATE 2/13/2020-After 5 years of owning and operating Aromas I have discovered A NEW FEATURE OF THE AROMA!!!!!!! My spouse and I make all our own bread. I had tried the Yogurt button early on to get a quicker rise on my black bean burger buns, rolls, etc., but found the bread seemed to rise the same as if it was in the bread box. On my other appliances with a ferment feature I found they were also lacking in the quick rise department. So I found myself eyeing a fancy, foldable bread proofer. I started percolating. Was there something I overooked? How do I know the bread proofer could obtain a quicker rise for me? All of a sudden I realized---cue music-preferably the first few bars of The Knack's My Sharona with that bumping bass line---MY AROMA!!!!!!!---great ad campaign-looking forward-Ahhhhh, I placed my black bean burger buns in on the KEEP WARM setting, not the yogurt button. And wait---Not too long....PERFECT SUPER PERKY HIGH RISE BUNS-QUICK-much quicker than a ferment or a sit there in a bread box kind of rise. In fact they so far they are the best burger buns I have made. Note the average Aroma fits 5 homemade burger buns. Just add the ingredients, ask a nice bread machine to help with the work and shape the dough, then place in the Aroma on KEEP WARM and check in around 30 minutes to see how awesome the dough is. Hot tip-Remember to ad a little baking powder along with the yeast.-Julie SandsI am a vegetarian and so is my spouse. We did not used to be and so I went about making taste a likes to many of the meals I was formerly used to eating. I have hundreds of my very own vegetarian recipes even replicating the taste of foie gras using organic cage free eggs, caviar, veal parmagiana (using bread dough that has been dried somewhat,) and others too numerous to mention in this article.To encourage you to eat perfectly, (eating perfectly includes ethics,) I am letting you in on a VERY easy way to make delicious inexpensive vegetarian and or vegan soups in the Aroma that taste like they even have meat or fish in them though they do not.You will need certain staples on hand in your kitchen to do this. First you need containers that you will use as soup starter jars. These can be any type of containers, even recycled margarine containers work to get you started. I used to use recycled pasta jars to store my homemade soymilk in before we were able to purchase mason jars and funnels that make things a lot easier. Just remember, do not go in debt buying supplies, etc.! Do not put it on a credit card. Get a little at a time instead no matter even if you drive a Ferrari and live in an eight bedroom mansion, I say drive because I ask is that Ferrari paid off? Do you even own it yet, or is it even leased?A Foodsaver vacuum sealer, the larger model, not the hand held is fantastic for vacuum sealing soup starter jars to keep them fresh in wide mouth mason jars using the optional Foodsaver wide mouth mason jar attachment. Mason jar funnels are also helpful to have on hand. I recommend three as you will quickly find yourself vacuum sealing leftovers in jars, even leftover cake can be stored in half gallon wide mouth mason jars and vacuum sealed staying fresh in the refrigerator for months. A quick refresh in the microwave gives it that just came out of the oven taste.If considering what Aroma model to purchase, I like the kind that also sauté simmer but I do NOT cook meat or fish, etc., in them so I do not feel guilty about using that function. I sauté things like Morningstar vegetarian soy patties, vegetarian soy strips (Morningstar bacon-tastes like bacon,) breaded dough that has been dried to make my tastes like veal parmagiana meal. I also sauté black bean burger patties and burger buns, vegetables, etc., etc. Since you will most likely eventually be using at least two Aromas at a time, one with soup, another with pasta sauce, another you are sautéing or steaming in, if you are not yet vegetarian I recommend getting one that steams and makes soup but does not have the sauté simmer function. Then when you are confident you will only sauté vegetarian or vegan buying another that does and adding and you have more ability to make more complex meals, such as a cup of fresh homemade soup with dinner if desired.If you already have an Aroma with Saute-Simmer and were using the Aroma non-vegetarian I encourage you to begin to use it to make vegetarian meals. Same with the steamer function. If you start making soups you will see how easy this is and you will see it will be very easy and delightful.Now, how to make these easy tasty soups? In addition to the soup starter jars make sure you have plenty of different varieties of canned beans on hand, canned tomato sauce and tomato paste. Have lots of spices like Italian Seasonings, Basil, salt, pepper, paprika, coriander, bay leaves, clove (just one or two added to a soup is usually enough if using these to give the soup a ham type of flavor without the ham,) parsley, poultry seasoning, etc. I also keep Sweet and Sour sauce, Plum Sauce, Soy Sauce, Rice Wine, Balsamic Vinegar, Old Bay Seasoning, Taco Seasoning, Shwarma seasoning, non-gmo Cajun Spices, Tony Chacheres Brown Gravy mix and other vegan seasonings as some of my vegetarian soup making staples.Now for the fun part: During the week or weekend, whenever you cook, save any vegetarian leftovers in a soup jar. How do you do this if you are not yet cooking vegetarian? If you use vegetarian beans for example in a meal save the juice. If black beans were added put the black bean water that was in the can in a soup starter jar and vacuum seal it. If there is a small amount of leftover coffee in the pot you can even add that. Just fill up the jar, yes it will look different, a jar with coffee and bean juice and part of a cheese sandwich you did not finish made with vegetarian Tillamook Cheddar cheese. Did you steam spinach? Save the water from the spinach. It is a basis for vegetable soup stock. Have a mayonnaise jar that you are tired of scraping to get the last bit out? Put HOT water in the jar, shake it to mix up all that unused mayonnaise then store it in the fridge until you make soup, you will add the mayonnaise broth into the soup also. What about the salad dressing bottle that you thought was empty? It is not empty but still has delicious soup making spices, add HOT water, shake and a broth will emerge. Place it in the fridge it will help to make a delicious one of a kind vegetarian soup. Finished that small spice jar of pepper? Add hot water, shake and save for broth. Do this with all spices. You will be so excited to see what a savings this is. The money you did not spend on food save as a food fund. If you retire in thirty years, a food partition will be handy to supplement your grocery budget at that time. Maybe you will have $100,000 dollars or more in your food savings partition from not eating out and making inexpensive vegetarian soups on the weekends and putting away that money in a partition you set aside for food instead of spending it on something else.Since I already eat only vegetarian I even often shake the crumbs from a leftover container into a soup jar. Even my sourdough bread starter I put in soup. When I change jars on my sourdough starter I fill the old one with some hot water and shake it. It goes into soup and makes it own flat matzoh type tasting pasta in the soup. Leftover bread crumbs, even cake crumbs go into my soups. Have leftover flat soda or beer or wine or vodka in a glass? Put it in a soup starter jar. Even those ice cubes that were in the soda can be put in a jar and help make broth.I often like to have soup on the weekends, giving me a break from cooking and it also means less dishes. I open my refrigerator and gather my soup starter jars, usually there are around five or so and it makes a big batch of soup in my Aroma. If I need to add beans I throw some in. I then add around a tablespoon of salt to the Aroma. If there is no rice or grain in the jars I throw in some uncooked rice or barley or pasta, whatever I feel like. I cook it on high for two hours. I taste it and finish blending adding spices or even tomato sauce as needed. Often I do not add anything other than the salt, it is that good right away. If I have to blend it usually takes less than five minutes and no more than twenty to get a fantastic soup. If the soup tastes awful, DO NOT THROW IT OUT. Just adjust the spices-for example adding beans with bean water or tomato sauce or leftover spaghetti sauce and it will fix it. You will have delicious soup. You will learn to make a great soup quickly and easily. Have fun taking those leftover Sunday pancakes and making soup with them.NOTES ON THIS MODEL AROMA: I am particularly impressed with the oatmeal button. I just put some extra virgin olive oil in the Aroma pan with a little salt, oatmeal and water and I do not even have to stir, I get perfect oatmeal. So wonderful as I use oatmeal in my bread making and also use oatmeal or rice as a vegetarian dog food base for my homemade dog food I feed to my dog. The oatmeal button is a fantastic help to me. To add fruit flavors it is as easy as adding some strawberry or blueberry jelly and chopped walnuts or other nuts are also flavor options. I began making my own jelly with my bread machine for environmental reasons a few years ago when I realized it cuts down on the number of containers my spouse and I use. I just refill my mason jars wit the homemade jelly. As far as the sushi rice button it works well but I was disappointed with the name. Instead of saying Sushi Rice it should be called Sticky Rice rather than sushi rice for ethical reasons as not to encourage the eating of fish. The quinoa button I have not tried yet but I am wondering if other grains could be cooked on that setting? I use a lot of barley, couscous, farro, frekkeh, grains such as that. The packaging was disappointing as it showed pictures of what appears to be fish or meat. My original Aroma, which has less functions but still can sauté never showed anything but vegetarian cooking pictures on the box and so that packaging was quite superior as it did not encourage non-vegetarian eating. I was expecting since this is a newer style Aroma with more functions the packaging would have been more improved by showing only vegan cooking pictures, being even more ethical than the former vegeatrian only packaging of my original Aroma purchased around 5 years ago. The Aroma is still my favorite brand of multi cooker and I look forward to them improving even more.