David v. The San Francisco Treat

Tonight I come home from a long e-board meeting at the station, chop meat and hamburger rolls in hand, anticipating a nice meal of some sloppy joe's with a side or two. I decide that I would like a change of pace from the usual Lipton bag of noodles, and will have some of the Rice-a-Roni we have in the cabinet.

I get everything ready without really reading the instructions; some butter, a pan to cook it in, etc. When I'm finally ready to cook it is the first time I truly get to inspect the directions.

Step one says to mix the rice and butter in a skillet. So I do this; I let the butter melt a little bit, then poured the rice in. About a minute into the prep, I think something has to be wrong; all the rice is sticking to the pan, and the butter is no longer melting because its been overwhelmed by the rice, like a big buttery rice ball. Someone tell me: is this truly the way it is to be prepared? I have huge mounds of rice sitting in the thing that I have to keep moving constantly, because otherwise it'll all burn onto the bottom of the pan and I'll be scraping it off for ten hours.

Finally, I decide this has to be wrong, and pour a little bit of the water from step two into the skillet. After stirring this for about a minute, the rice starts to resemble gruel; it took on a thick, oatmeal texture. To combat this, I just poured the rest of the water in. This did no good. So I got a pan of hard, uncooked gruel rice simmering in front of me, and I figure if I'm going to screw it up, I might as well go all the way with it, and pour in the seasoning. So now I have yellow gruel. I just cover it with the lid on low heat for about seven minutes, until I realize all the rice is fusing onto the bottom with no chance of ever coming off. So I just turned it off and put it into a serving bowl and actually ate some of it with the rest of the meal, which turned out fine.

Now, I don't contend that there's a chance I have some low level of retardation. Rice-a-Roni has been around a long time. They have to know how to cook their own product. But I don't understand how those directions could be accurate. You're supposed to stir dry rice around in the pan? What? And the rest of the directions, they're too vague. Everything else you cook usually has precise times on how long something should sit and cook. Not Rice-a-Roni. They just assume you have cooked rice all your life and know what to do.

I'm never cooking this crap again. I should have known better than to break from routine.

On a side note, if you know what the hell I did wrong, leave a comment. I have another box of this stuff that I don't just want to throw out. Although, it could make a great gift for someone I don't like.