Shortly after we had Ollie, I was getting all excited about starting him on solids when he was about 4mths old. I had just bought the Philips Avent Steamer and Blender and was thinking about all the types of puree that I could do with it. Haha. Kan cheong much?
Of course, we would progress from purees to rice porridge right? So I did a little research and read about a couple of food jars available on the market. Basically narrowed it down to the three popular brands: Tiger, Thermos & Zojirushi. All three brands had their pros and cons, namely price and how long they could keep food hot for. I was toying between Tiger and Zojirushi, mainly kinda baulking at the price of Zojirushi food jars. Long story short, I did end up getting the Zojirushi at a hefty $65 for a 350ml jar.
my 3yo food jar
3 years on, how do I feel about it? I absolutely love it. It has kept Ollie’s food piping hot for 8 hours (longest). I kept porridge in there for more than a day and it was still hot. It packs a fair bit of food tho QT is proving me wrong with his mad appetite. I had to buy another 450ml food jar as a spare to keep up with his food demands.
L to R: 350ml, 450ml, lunch warmer
Apart from these two food jars, I also own a Zojirushi lunch combo set, consisting of three microwave safe containers, one large cylindrical container and two smaller boxes. I won it so it was a major bonus!! Haha. The cylindrical container sits in a metal case which helps to keep food warm, and I have been able to keep freshly cooked porridge warm in that container for a good 4-5 hours.
Now, what prompted this post is that I recently discovered one other thing I could do with my food jars! I can cook porridge in them! OMG *mindblown*. I had read about it somewhere but never thought much about it until we planned to make a trip to the West to visit some family and do some travelling. Thing is..QT doesn’t have much teeth and I am not very hopeful he is going to be able to eat much other food with just 5 teeth. So I have to be prepared to bring cook him some porridge whilst we are travelling. And I am NOT gg to buy a slow cooker just so I can cook him food lor. I need luggage space for shopping!!
So…off I went testing the “urban legend” or not. Put the washed rice in, filled the jar up with boiling hot water, close and wait. Well..the thing is I didn’t know how long it would take to cook. So we just left it on the countertop and promptly forgot about it. We only remembered it 1.5 days later, and even then we couldn’t remember why we left porridge sitting in the jar. Hahahaha #FAIL. We had to restart the experiment again. FOL.
cooked porridge in a jar
consistency without the excess liquid
This time we checked back at 4 hours and the porridge was cooked! The porridge was a teochew muay consistency, which was suitable for 11mo QT. Major yay! A quick check with my sister who bought the jar for me from Japan, there are some recipes that one could try “cooking” with the jar but most of the ingredients had to be pre-cooked. I did try adding in some uncooked pumpkin to see if it would cook together, but nope. AFter 4 hours, the rice was half-cooked and the pumpkin was barely cooked. Boo.
What I have done so far was to continue pureeing the veggies and meat, and freezing them into ice cube portions. I would take cubes out with me in a separate container with the porridge still cooking. Once it was cooked, I would throw in the half-frozen puree cubes into the jar. This would heat up the puree and help to cool down the cooked porridge. Win!
I will probably try to see how else I can add in ingredients to “cook” in the jar to make it a truly one pot meal. Just need to find the time to experiment!