Rice Cooker Fiasco

So, I guess you can't make rice pudding in the rice cooker using brown rice. It must not be able to absorb the milk.

How do I know that, you ask? A couple of weeks ago, I used the same recipe for rice pudding that I had earlier posted. Except, I used brown rice. (And I used regular whole milk, but since that's what the original recipe called for, it shouldn't have been a problem) About halfway through the cooking time, it started smelling a little funny in the kitchen. I opened up the rice cooker, and milk exploded everywhere. Plus, the outer grains of the rice (endosperm?) were caked on the inside top of the rice cooker.

After it had cooled, I cleaned it for about 1/2 hour. Then, a little later, I spent another 20 minutes cleaning some parts on the bottom that had burned. If you know me, you know that's an awful lot of time for me to spend cleaning an appliance. It looked pretty good, so I tried another batch of plain rice. The rice turned out okay, but the cooker smelled pretty bad. I noticed when I tipped it that there were some drops of milk stil coming out.

My ever-patient husband took it apart and noticed that the insulation was pretty soaked with milk. It's been hanging on the clothesline since then, and has been rained on a few times, so hopefully the smell is gone. I don't want to make him have to put it all back together, so I'm hoping I'll be able to find one at a thrift store before school starts.

I'm pretty tough on appliances, and they turn up fairly often at thrift stores, so I can't really justify buying a new one. This is the one that I just broke. I had purchased it, still in the box, at Goodwill for about $10 a couple of years ago.