So this is it...the great rice debate! It's a discussion/debate I have with my friends every now and then, when one of us serves a rice dish at an event or if the talk just wanders to rice (...as it so frequently does, of course!) But seriously; even if you never actually talk about cooking rice with your girlfriends, you probably actually do cook rice from time to time. What I want to know is: how? That is, how do you cook it?

Now, I underwent a rice-cooking revolution about 15 years ago, when I was in university. I witnessed one of my friends cooking rice: she used rice that came in a bag (not a box!) and she left it on the stove for a while, simmering. See, I'd never made anything other than Minute Rice, myself. The whole world of boil, simmer, absorb steam was well beyond me, but not for long! Soon I was buying all different kinds of rice: brown! wild! basmati, even! And I soon became a master of the stove-top method of rice cooking. In fact, when I shared an apartment with my sister during the first few years of our working lives, there was a permanent message on our kitchen whiteboard: "two cups water one cup rice"; a reminder of the proper ratio of water to rice for a perfect pot, every time.

Life was good...rice, real rice, was no longer a mystery reserved solely for the initiated. I had a saucepan, a stove...a love of rice. And my rice bubble was about to be burst - again.

Shortly after getting married, by husband and I were dining at a friend's house, and when she served the obligatory rice side-dish - I was amazed to see her scooping it out of a big, white electrical appliance that I had thought was a slow cooker. WRONG. Kim's brother had worked in Korea for a couple of years, you see, and when he returned, he brought everyone home this revolutionary device: a rice cooker.

Pshaw, I said, why bother with another appliance when you can cook rice beautifully in a simple saucepan? The answer, it seems, is twofold: using a rice cooker was simpler ("you just throw in a bunch of rice and a bunch of water, and it "dings" when it's done" enthused Kim's partner) and, evidently, it produced a better product.

Way back then, you had to go to an Asian market to buy a rice cooker, but now you can find them everywhere, which means I and most of my friends own one. I'll admit, I'm a rice cooker convert, and it's all about the simplicity - it's just one less thing to think about at dinner prep time. But some of my friends (call them purists, if you like) insist on cooking their rice in a saucepan on the stove. They carefully measure the right proportions of water and rice...wait for the boil, turn down the heat and monitor the time. But for them, this is what cooking rice is all about.

So here's where you come in...let me know where you stand on the Great Rice Debate: complete the MicroPoll and then weigh in below in comments on the whys and wherefores of your rice cooking methods!