Name: Rice Cooker Pepper Lunch
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 20 min
Total time: 30 min
Ingredients: 1 cup rice; 1 tbsp light soy sauce; 1 tbsp honey; 1 tsp apple cider vinegar; 1 tbsp garlic paste or 2 cloves garlic, minced; 1/2 tsp black pepper; 1 tsp dark soy sauce (optional); 1 cup water, or as required by the rice cooker; 1 onion, sliced; 1/4 cup corn; 150g shabu shabu beef, or beef, thinly sliced; 1 tbsp butter; 1-2 stalks spring onions, chopped for garnish; 1/2 tsp sesame seeds, for garnish

If you love the savoury-sweet, beefy flavours of Pepper Lunch, you are going to enjoy this one-pot Rice Cooker Pepper Lunch recipe – perfect for weekday meals!

My Pepper Lunch dupe recipe is a top favourite on this blog. I streamlined the recipe even more to be the most convenient one pot, Rice Cooker Pepper Lunch meal you’ll ever have! This is a set-it-and-forget-it meal, that takes just 10 minutes of prep and zero active cook time.

Sure, you can’t quite replicate the sizzle and char from a hot plate, but the convenience and minimal prep time just about makes this equal standing with the original recipe.

Why you will LOVE this recipe?

Sweet and Savoury Goodness: This recipe will let you achieve that sweet and savoury flavour of the original Pepper Lunch in less steps, and lesser ingredients.
Convenience & Time-Saving: This one-pot recipe simplifies the cooking process, making it ultra convenient and time-saving! All you do is add all of the ingredients in the rice cooker, set it and forget it! No need to use multiple pots and pans… which just means less dishes to wash too.
Versatile: This Pepper Lunch can be versatile according to what you have in the fridge – the key is in the seasoning sauce.
Healthier Cooking: Unlike the original Pepper Lunch recipe which requires a fair bit of oil and a strong seasoning for flavour, this one can be a healthier option! Since the rice water is seasoned with the sauce, the rice will absorb all of those gorgeous flavours, which means you need far less of the seasoning sauce. Significantly much less oil is needed, the rice cooker also cooks the proteins by steaming.

Key Ingredients for Rice Cooker Pepper Lunch

Rice: I used Japanese rice here to keep it as close to the real Pepper Lunch as possible, but I’ve used Jasmine white rice and brown rice to amazing results!

Water or Stock: I use water, but if you have some stock lying around, that will work too.

Shabu Shabu Beef, Yakiniku Beef, or thinly sliced beef (sirloin or ribeye is a good choice): This is a thinly sliced beef that will cook quickly in the rice cooker! If you don’t have easy access to shabu shabu, thinly slice whatever beef you have, in an angle. No beef? No problem! This works just as well with chicken and salmon.

Sweet and Savoury Sauce: This is the bulk of the flavour! Pepper Lunch is usually flavoured with a savoury sweet Amakuchi sauce, or a garlic soy Karakuchi sauce. To simplify this recipe, I combined the two sauces – a AmaKara-kuchi, hybrid if you will.

What’s in the AmaKara-kuchi Sauce:

Soy Sauce
Honey: This adds that delicious sweetness to the sauce! Alternatively, you can use brown sugar, coconut sugar, mirin or corn syrup.
Garlic: I used garlic paste, but minced garlic will work fine as well.
Vinegar: This is not in the original recipe, but I’ve been enjoying adding this in lately! It adds a nice lift to the flavour of the sauce.
Black Pepper: Freshly ground black pepper is signature to Pepper Lunch!
Dark Soy Sauce (optional!): This adds gorgeous colour to the rice! It also adds a slight caramelised flavour to complement the honey.

BONUS! Make another batch of the seasoning sauce to serve alongside your Pepper Lunch! Double (or triple, or even quadruple!) the measurements for the sauce here and combine in a saucepan. Cook the sauce over medium heat until it boils and thickens. Turn off the heat. Serve this sauce on the side with the Pepper Lunch Rice. Store any extra sauce in the fridge for next times!

Corn (or vegetable of choice): I love my corn with pepper rice, but other vegetables that work great include frozen mixed vegetables (give them a quick rinse under water to slightly defrost and soften them), peeled edamames, bell peppers, peas, diced carrots, chopped cauliflower or broccoli. Have some leafy vegetables instead? No prob! Add it in at the least 5 minutes instead so you don’t overcook it.

Butter: A dollop of butter at the end will give the meal a rich finish.

What Rice Cooker To Use?

This can work with ANY rice cooker, but this is the one I use:

Zojirushi NS-ZCC10 Neuro Fuzzy Cooker
Zojirushi NS-ZAQ10 Micom Fuzzy Logic (the exact one I purchased – this is the same as the model above; it’s labelled differently in Singapore/Southeast Asia. This is a Made in Japan model.)

The Zojirushi range of rice cookers are well-loved for its reliability, effortlessly perfect rice each time and best of all… the musical chime when your rice is done! I enjoy my Zojirushi and highly recommend it!

It IS pricey, so again, you can use ANY rice cooker with this recipe.

I only recently upgraded to my Zojirushi, and I used my previous non-fancy rice cooker just fine.

How to Make Rice Cooker Pepper Lunch

1. Prepare Ingredients

Wash rice until water runs clear. Drain. It’s ok if there is a little bit of water left in the pot.

2. Season Rice

To the rice, add soy sauce, honey, vinegar, garlic paste, and black pepper. Optional, add a dash of dark soy sauce to add more colour to the rice.

Now add water, follow the line on your rice cooker, otherwise the general ratio is 1 cup rice:1 cup water.

TIP! Add a little less liquid, about a tablespoon, that you usually would to your rice cooker. This will slightly char the bottom of your rice.

3. Top Rice

Top rice with onions, corn and beef.

Add another layer of black pepper over the beef.

4. Turn on Rice Cooker and Cook!

Place pot in the rice cooker.

Turn on the rice cooker to regular setting.

If there are different settings on your rice cooker, choose the rice that you used. That is, set to white rice if you used white rice, brown rice for brown rice.

That’s it!

TIP! If you have a bit more energy, make extra sauce while the rice is cooking! Simply double the sauce measurements here and combine over medium heat until bubbly. I also have an Amakuchi and Karakuchi sauce recipe in my original Pepper Lunch recipe!

5. Top with Butter and Mix!

Once rice cooker sets off, the Rice Cooker Pepper Lunch is done.

Top with butter, spring onions and sesame seeds, and immediately mix to combine with the rice.

Plate pepper lunch, and serve immediately.

6. Serve

Serve the rice cooker pepper lunch in individual serving plates. Garnish with more spring onions!

BONUS! Top with a fried egg!

How do I get my rice to char in a rice cooker?

Whenever I have the original style of Pepper Lunch on the hotplate, I like to spread my rice out thinly, so that the bottom of the rice gets scorched and slightly burnt. The result is a yummy plate of fried rice with crispy bits of burnt rice for textural change!

The rice cooker is designed to give you perfectly cooked rice every time, and once your rice is cooked, the heating element automatically adjusts the temperature. In other words, it’s near impossible to achieve that same level of burnt-ness in a rice cooker.

If you notice, I DID manage to achieve a slight char at the bottom of my rice.

There are a couple of ways to achieve the scorched effect:

1. ‘Scorched’ Setting

Some rice cookers actually have a ‘Scorch’ setting, believe it or not! Use this setting to get that char.

OR my preferred method:

2. Add less water

Add about a tablespoon LESS water than you usually would for your rice.
Do not immediately cook the rice, allow the rice to soak for at least 30 minutes. This will allow the rice to soak up some of the liquid, so that it cooks evenly within, even with lesser water.
Cook as usual.

That’s it! This is the method I use for my rice cooker, as well as all of my previous rice cookers.

A quick disclaimer that this method will NOT give you the same scorched rice effect as over the stovetop – but in a pinch it will do!

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