Nora Lum, better known by her rap name, Awkwafina, can’t quite figure out how to use her rice cooker. It was a gift from her 80-year-old grandmother, who advised her to fill the pot with rice, place the palm of her hand over the rice and pour in water until her hand was submerged.

“Am I supposed to squeeze down?” Ms. Lum wondered. “My grandmother can never really teach me anything, because she skips steps.” The rice cooker, a sturdy digital model from Aroma with a 20-cup capacity, did come with instructions, which Ms. Lum hasn’t read. “I just listen to my grandmother,” she said.

Her great-grandfather emigrated to the United States from China in the 1940s and opened Lum’s, one of the first and most beloved Cantonese restaurants in Flushing, Queens. Her grandmother ran a restaurant, too, in Port Jefferson, N.Y.

Image The rice cooker is a sturdy digital model from Aroma with a 20-cup capacity. Credit... Krista Schlueter for The New York Times

Ms. Lum, 27, who lives in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, subsists mostly on ramen and Chapagetti, a Korean version of Chinese zha jiang mian, made with instant noodles and a packet of salty-sweet black bean powder.