Quick Arroz Caldo with a bad-ass rice cooker

I've recently downsized to a 400 sq. foot studio from large 2-bedroom apartment.  I have had to get storage space since closet space is very much limited in my new home.  With the new apartment, I made a promise that I would try to cook real food (read "not eat out") unless it is for social purposes.  With that in mind, I am posting my recipe for my "I feel like I'm getting sick/It's cold/I am sick" soup.  This soup comes from my childhood where my filipino grandmother would make this magical dish called Arroz Caldo, which I believe means Hot Rice.  It is essentially a rice soup/porridge, which helped rice go a long way in the villages back in the Philippines or so my parents tell me.  They find it amusing that it's one of my favorite "sick" foods and it's a poor person's food.

The soup contains rice, chicken, garlic, ginger, and onion.  I have in recent years modified from my grandmother's recipe in that I do not dice up the ginger root for consumption.  One of the things I didn't like about the soup was biting into a ginger piece that I thought was chicken.  I actually peel the ginger and keep it in one big chunk so the ginger can be infused into the soup but easily avoided when dispensing the soup.

Today, I was at the Chicago marathon, cheering on the runners, walkers and cyclists in the cold weather.  By the end, my throat was sore.  Cold weather and throat issues can equal bad news bears so when I finally got home in the evening, I wanted my arroz caldo, but I didn't want it to take 4-5 hours.  When I cook it stovetop, it has to be cooked slowly to let everything (like garlic) soften and get the right consistency.  It was 5:30pm and I was not going to eat at 10pm.  In typical scientist fashion, I tried to figure out how to solve my problem.  Then, it hit me that I could maybe utilize my Zojirushi 5.5 cup rice cooker.  It has a porridge setting so it may be possible.  I tried scouring the internet for a recipe that I could modify and there was nothing so I made my own, which I am now sharing.  The best things about this recipe are that there is no burnt rice bottom of my big sauce pot now and the cooking time is much shorter and low-maintenance.

1.5hr Arroz Caldo (4-6 servings)

1 cup of white rice
1 can of Costco canned chicken (my lifesaver)
Chicken Broth or water
1 yellow onion
1 garlic bulb
ginger root

1) Measure 1 cup of white rice and wash in the rice cooker pot. Drain.
2) Add the entire can of Costco chicken with the broth it is packed in to the rice.
3) Peel the ginger root and add it to the pot.  
4) Add the yellow onion however you want to slice it.  I used a mandolin to cut mine.
5) Add water or chicken broth until the level has reached the White Rice 5 level mark.
6) This is the most troublesome part.  Peel an entire bulb of garlic and add to the rice.  You can slice/mince/not slice the garlic however you see fit.
7) Select the porridge setting and let the Zojirushi go.
8) About an hour later, the zojirushi should go off.  At this point, you can add any additional seasoning like salt, pepper, etc.  I added Vulcan Fire Salt.  Mix it in well and allow it sit at the Keep Warm setting for ~30min, depending on how you like your soup consistency. *Note: Arroz Caldo is kept pretty bland, which allows people to season it to their own preference with fish sauce, soy sauce, vinegar, pepper, lemon juice, lime juice, etc.
8) After the 30min induction time, it should be ready to eat.  Season to your own palate's perfection.  I like lemon juice in mine, which adds more citrus (good for colds).