I don't even refrigerate cooked rice. That makes rice bullets. What kind of rice are you doing this with? I only make what we will eat at any given meal, whether it is basmati, jasmine, sticky, or sushi rice. But then I am retired and don't need to have "meals in a minute". I guess even cooked/frozen rice is better than no rice at all. ;-) We have traveled extensively thru SE Asia where there is no refrigeration. They cook up "enough" for that day...each day. -Babka

Okay, now you put in "a lot" more water. Rice doesn't stop absorbing water, hence the gluey. You can try steaming it off, or you could try mashing some and frying it, frijoles style. So here's how you get it to all come out. Practice. That's really all there is to it. First find a good recipe for what you want to make. You may have used the exact technique, but not the exact ingredients and proportions. If the recipe just says "rice", skip it. Start with a recipe that says "medium grain brown basmati" or "regular Uncle Ben's" or "short grain arborio" or whatever kind it wants. That's also probably an indication that the directions are thorough--but read it through to make sure before you start cooking. Get a new bag of rice if yours has been hanging out in your pantry a long time (use that for making plain rice). Same with the rest of the ingredients--make sure they're all fresh, not merely okay, for the best chance of success. Then follow the recipe exactly. No substitutions or shortcuts. Exactly. See how it comes out. If it doesn't come out just right, try it again. If it comes out same as the first time, try another recipe. Once you like the recipe and have made it a few times, you can start messing with it, and you'll probably have better success because you'll know what has worked in the past. You'll also be able to grab a technique from the recipe and adapt it to your improvising. Risotto is dead easy. It just takes time. You might want to spend a week practicing small batches until it comes out right. It helps if your liquid (stock or water) is warm. Don't take shortcuts. Just resign yourself to standing there (or sitting close) for the whole time, and stirring stirring stirring, ladle stir stir stir ladle. When they do it on TV shows, the rice starts out par-boiled, so it's cooked through but hasn't shed its starch. That's the hard way to do it unless you're doing restaurant service and want to finish it a la minute, or you're on TV and can't spend an hour stirring. Once you have a handle on it, you'll be able to time chopping something or measuring something, or ducking out to the bathroom, without any harm. But you have to go right back to it. Paella is about building layers (figuratively--of additions, not strata). There's no one way to make it, but the way I learned the tomatoes go in almost at the end. First you toast the rice in your pan to give it browning and dry it more so it can soak up more yummy juice, then you add liquid, seasoning and herbs. You don't start putting the meat and hard vegetables in until the rice is halfway cooked or more. Then the softer vegetables, and the tomatoes and olives near the end. If you're using fast cooking seafood/fish, it goes in once the hard vegetables have softened and more or less with the soft vegetables, depending on how long each needs to cook.

we do steel cut oats in the microwave at work (coaches oats) but I thought it would be nice to make one big batch instead of individual batches...plus I was trying to dupe the Jamba Juice oatmeal..After looking for jamba juice dupe recipes, all I found was that they use soymilk and one person said they had seen them use Country something or other steel cut oats...but on jamba juices website it states they used Quaker Steel cut oats, soymilk.

Sunnysmom- I followed the link to chowhound and to be honest Instant Pot sounds like a lot of work. The poster talks about scrubbing the rice, rinsing the rice, etc. Is it really worth the effort? I care about results vs. effort expended. The BS claim of saving up to 70% energy is nonsense. Without hard numbers it is nothing but marketing which can claim anything they want. I ask because I shop for rice cookers every once in awhile. I always start out with an inexpensive model. Then I decide I need this feature, and that feature, and I could not possibly do without fuzzy logic. If the truth is known I do not use rice all that often so do not need anything all that fancy. I just want something that is easy and quick to use. Something that gives better results that using instant rice. Or spending all the time to cook "real rice" without a machine doing the hardwork.