help! should we buy a rice cooker?
Hello dear readers. I’m hoping you can help Chad and I settle a debate. He thinks we should get a rice cooker — you know, a contraption you plug in, pour in some water and rice and let it cook to perfection. I think this seems like another small appliance we will have to store and don’t really need. Do they really do a better/easier job than cooking rice the old-fashion way, on the stove? One of Chad’s favorite dishes (left over from his bachelor days) is beans and rice; and no doubt we’ll be making a lot of rice once Isadora starts eating food. But really, do we need this? As appliances go, is it useful like a Foreman Grill, or more like a rarely-used fondue pot? Tell me your rice cooker thoughts! If you like them, which one do you recommend? The above one is from Williams-Sonoma. — Angela M.
May 8th, 2008 at 6:01 am
It’s perfect rice, every time. You can flavour it with chicken stock or veggie stock and it always comes out perfect. Brown rice, white rice, jasmine, whatever. No muss, no fuss, it stays warm until you need it. WAY better than cooking on the stove. We use our all the time.
May 8th, 2008 at 6:17 am
Eh. I’ve never had any trouble cooking it on the stove.
May 8th, 2008 at 6:22 am
it’s the one small appliance we use ALL the time- more than the cuisinart, kitchenaid, blender combined. we are a major rice family, and usually keep it warming for more than a day. we had an old one for years, and just upgraded to a Zojirushi, which i highly recommend. A little spendy, but it’s a much smaller footprint than other models (and it plays “twinkle, twinkle, little star”) when the rice is done.
May 8th, 2008 at 6:22 am
I am of the firm belief that rice cookers should be a feature for Unitasker Wednesday. I could see where it would be useful if I were running a restaurant out of my kitchen or had a family of 10 or so. But otherwise, I am fine with a good ol’ pot, a lid & the stove.
http://unclutterer.com/category/unitasker-wednesday/
May 8th, 2008 at 6:31 am
I have a TINY kitchen and the one small appliance that I think is definitely worth it’s space is my rice cooker. If you plan on eating a healthier diet at all, rice and grains will play a big part in what you cook. Mine makes perfect rice, every time, no matter the style of rice (brown, basmati, long grain, short grain)- no matter the liquid (tomato juice, vegetable broth, chicken broth). I have a slightly fancier rice cooker that will make oatmeal porridge for breakfast or work as a substitute slow cooker for stews. I’ve even made entire meals in my rice cooker by adding some chopped veggies and pre-cooked sausage to Zatarain’s Jamabalaya mix.
It’s just so nice when you are in the middle of trying to get together dinner and have a couple of different things on the stove to turn to the rice cooker, poor the rice and the liquid in, and walk away! Trust me, once you have one, you will never understand how you lived without one.
May 8th, 2008 at 6:56 am
It’s definitely not an essential appliance, but it works like such a no-brainer charm (you can set it ahead of time and forget about it for hours) and really does make such perfect rice that it’s definitely not a useless appliance. And it is really tough to get Asian-style rice (separated, fluffy grains) without it. I have a Zojirushi and love it. One thing to get used to–if you cook any kind of brown rice, it takes longer than it would on the stovetop (perhaps because I would throw up my hands and eat al dente rice that way), but once you’ve figured that out, it definitely makes life easy and tasty (and frees up a burner and a pot).
May 8th, 2008 at 6:58 am
A related question: Can you use a slow cooker as a rice cooker?
May 8th, 2008 at 7:10 am
I am a minimalist. If something doesn’t get constant use, it goes out. With that said, I have had the same rice cooker since college, 18 years now. I use it all the time. You never burn the bottom of the rice, and it will stay warm for a long time. You will not regret it. The brand of mine is an Oster–it couldn’t have been expensive since I bought it in college. Make sure to get one that is all metal, not plastic.
May 8th, 2008 at 7:13 am
I have the exact rice cooker that you pictured and if it’s brown rice you like to eat, don’t buy it! I have been so disapointed because that particular appliance sputters water out over the top and leaks a slimy mess all over the counter when cooking brown rice… more work than it’s worth for sure. It works just dandy for white rice though…
May 8th, 2008 at 7:20 am
I inherited a Black and Decker rice steamer, minus a few parts, but I still love it. The stove method is not fool-proof; burned rice and pots happen frequently. The steamer is not completely fool-proof, but nearly. After adding the water, rice, and setting the timer, you walk away, or go shopping, or play with your kids (fur kids for me), or take a nap, and don’t have to worry about it burning or boiling over. The version I have steams vegetables much better than I’ve been able to do with a pot and steam rack. Since I am gluten free, rice is important, and I would have to put a lot more thought into cooking without the steamer. Also, brown rice with real maple syrup has become one of my favorite “healthy” deserts, so I use the steamer A LOT.
May 8th, 2008 at 7:26 am
i was going to ask the same thing as sean, if so then a slow cooker is a great investment!
otherwise, it all depends on your rice needs. i’m more of a wheat based household than a rice base household and considering that most of the time it’s just me…. a rice cooker takes up way too much space.
for making rice about once a week, i’ve perfected the stovetop method and just have to adjust for the amount of liquid depending on the type of rice (which you STILL have to do for a rice cooker anyway). extra rice just pops into the fridge and gets a sprinkling of water before a good microwaving and it’s fresh as a daisy again.
if this a daily part of the meal making, i’d say invest in a rice cooker…. or a slow cooker if it’ll do the job!
May 8th, 2008 at 7:45 am
I’ve had a rice cooker since graduating from college in 1996. I bought a fancy one that got all gunky because it had an attached, lift-up lid. For my wedding registry in ‘99, I requested an inexpensive Aroma rice cooker, which I still use till this day. It has two buttons, warm and cook.
I am of Latin decent, so rice is cooked about 5 out of 7 nights in our house. And yes, it is worth it. I can’t tell you how much I miss my Mom’s rice, made out of an aluminum “caldero” (pot), but this is a great option. I do use a touch of veggie oil and salt. However, you can totally omit that from the recipe, if you want a very healthy version of steamed rice.
Now, if you will be making brown rice the majority of the time, I am not a fan of doing it in the rice cooker. It takes forever, and I don’t find that the rice absorbs the water well enough. It also creates a very crunchy bottom of the bowl (sometimes burned). The pictured cooker is very pretty, but you will do just fine with a $20 one from Target. Good luck with your decision.
May 8th, 2008 at 7:51 am
Rice cookers are AMAZING. It makes perfect rice and we use ours to steam vegetables all the time. I cook perfect artichokes in there!
May 8th, 2008 at 8:03 am
Well…I’m Asian so if it needs to be said…I will never be without a rice cooker.
I’ve never made rice on the stove so I have no clue how easy or hard it is. However, I can say that with a rice cooker I always have perfect rice.
I know that they are expensive but I don’t think you’ll ever go wrong with a Zojirushi rice maker.
As you can see they come in some very high tech models: http://www.zojirushi.com/ourproducts/ricecookers/ricecookers.html
But something as simple as this model will do: http://www.zojirushi.com/ourproducts/ricecookers/nhs.html
May 8th, 2008 at 8:07 am
We’ve got one and I always have much better luck with a pot on the stove. For some reason my rice cooker always burns whatever kind of rice I’m cooking and I can monitor a pot on the stove just fine while I’m cooking other stuff. But I am starting to wonder if it’s because of altitude - maybe I should be putting in more liquid?
May 8th, 2008 at 8:39 am
We just got one from our wedding registry, and I am impressed. My fiancee wanted sticky rice like his favorite Asian restaurants, and the rice cooker makes it perfectly. The pot and stove was always okay for me before, but now I really do like the rice cooker. I always copped out of making rice before because it was a longer process and needed my attention, and would instead microwave a potato or something. I’m really glad we got it. We got a lower-end model of Zojirushi, we get the high quality at a cheaper price. Here’s the link to it on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Zojirushi-NHS-10-Cooker-Steamer-Warmer/dp/B00004S576/ref=wl_it_dp?ie=UTF8&coliid=I3BU27AU0NTRKY&colid=33R1BCKJE3FX1
May 8th, 2008 at 9:20 am
I never would have bought a rice cooker, but my husband came with one.
I have to admit, I do use it because you don’t have to think about it and ours has a timer so you can set it to start cooking at a certain time and be done with it. Also, there are a number of things you can cook in it other than rice. My husband will sometimes set it to make oatmeal in the morning for us. We have a rice cooker book that my husband bought long before we met that helps me use it for the various stuff we cook in it. I never would have thought to buy one, but I do love it now! It makes perfect meals every time!
May 8th, 2008 at 9:21 am
I’m Asian, so not having one is total heresy. And you can use it for perfect brown rice, pilafs, and also as a steamer. You can also make soups in it — kinda like a slow cooker, but not slow.
May 8th, 2008 at 9:27 am
I came into this post planning to talk about how I had a really hard time learning to cook rice, but now that I’ve got the hang of it I think rice cookers are silly when you can use use the stove and a pot, and how I can still throw veggies/beans/vegetable broth into my rice on the stovetop and it cooks just fine.
However, all of these comments have made me change my mind, and maybe I will get a rice cooker myself. I am really bad about forgetting to start the rice until I’m almost done with everything else in the meal, and then I have to wait on the rice to get ready. A rice cooker seems like it’d be a good fix for that.
May 8th, 2008 at 9:34 am
Oatmeal! Brilliant. I never thought of using a rice cooker to do that. Thanks for the idea, Laura.
May 8th, 2008 at 9:46 am
maybe i’m biased because i’m of asian heritage, but i cannot imagine life without a rice cooker. i don’t have a microwave or a toaster oven in my small studio but i have my zojirushi. my mother has had the same small sanyo rice cooker since she came to the states in ‘77. it is much more versatile than just cooking rice, as everyone has stated– steaming veggies, oatmeal is a genius idea, my friends used to throw a few pieces of protein (fish, chicken) and chinese broccoli on top of rice that was cooked with a little rice vinegar, soy sauce, and sugar, and you’d have a complete meal!
May 8th, 2008 at 9:50 am
You can steam veggies in a rice cooker? Hmmm. that makes it more appealing to me. Has anyone used them to make baby food?
May 8th, 2008 at 9:54 am
We eat a lot of rice asian-style. Enough that we buy the 20 lb bags more than once a year.
The rice cooker is great, as it frees up a place on the stove and a lot of the cook’s attention when making dinner. Being novice, but adventurous cooks, it’s good to know that at least one thing is going to turn out even if you do forget about it.
The non-stick liner is also nice - it’s easier to clean than a pot.
That said, if your diet is such that you don’t think a 20 lb bag of rice would be a reasonable purchase, the rice cooker probably isn’t either.
My mother makes brown rice in her cooker, and it does take longer, but mostly turns out fine - you just have to add more water.
May 8th, 2008 at 9:55 am
I never wanted a rice cooker for many of the same reasons you didn’t. I made it just fine on the stove and didn’t have to have an extra appliance around. My husband is Indian so he was always wanting to get one and I kept putting him off. Then I used this http://www.cutleryandmore.com/details.asp?SKU=8224&src=Froogle&cam=Products&kw=8224 at a friends house and I was hooked. It cooks great rice in the microwave, saving burner space on my stove to cook other things and uses less energy than the stove as well. We had to experiment a bit to get the amount of water and the cook time right but now it makes perfect brown rice every time, never spills over and goes in the dishwasher at the end for easy clean up. Not bad for $10 at target. Try this first and if your husband doesn’t love it you can always buy a rice cooker later and only be out $10.
May 8th, 2008 at 9:58 am
I too have an Aroma cooker, and it often toasts the bottom of the rice but that just means I don’t wash the rice very well. My husband seems to like that part though, so … I value my rice cooker far above the George Forman grill (which I use to make paninis), and echo everyone else’s thoughts on the “fix it and forget it” front. I wouldn’t get the Cuisinart model, though, but would recommend a Zojirushi if you want to spend the money or even the Aroma (about $30 when I bought it) if you don’t.
May 8th, 2008 at 9:58 am
I think you are going to get a lot of pros and cons. I don’t have one but really can’t see the use. I would think the only difference is that you don’t have to wait for the water to boil. When I make my rice I don’t open the pot, peek or whatever for the time requested - I just forget it and when 30 or 90 minutes are up I go back to the pot and VIOLA! Perfect rice every time. Oh yeah I also use stock instead of water.
Hugs!!!
May 8th, 2008 at 10:21 am
I use my rice cooker every time that I make rice (and that’s a lot in my household). I bought one from someone 5 yrs ago for $10 on craigslist. Have been using since and really appreciate not having burned rice anymore! I can turn it on and not think about it anymore, which is my favorite thing about it.
May 8th, 2008 at 10:22 am
Invaluable. especially with a kiddo around. It’s one less thing that I have to worry about watching when I’m cooking and supervising a beginning crawler!. Plus I can start it way ahead of a meal. I too have had mine since college (some cheapo brand) and while it does occasionally get gunky with brown rice (I always put it on a towel when I use it) I can use it to make all sorts of things: groats (like oatmeal but with wholegrains - I can put it on, go to the gym and it’s done when I get back), dahls, quinona, millet, etc. Lots of the latter options for the kiddo. Plus, as many folks above have attested to, you can add all sorts of ingredients to your rice and cook as is (peas, broth, herbs, chopped vegis, etc. It makes great indian rices)…
May 8th, 2008 at 10:54 am
Love my Zojirushi. I use it to make all kinds of rice - including brown.
May 8th, 2008 at 10:56 am
Being Asian, I use my rice cooker anywhere from once a week to 4 or 5. Measuring isn’t brain surgery (the middle finger method works EVERY time - from the top of the rice, to your first knuckle). With a baby of any age (mine is 15monthas and another on the way), it’s one less thing to monitor (vs. stove) and I always throw in other stuff (veggies, fish, etc. ) for us, and for feeding to my son.
BABY FOOD: In the past, I’ve just thrown in whatever I was going to feed my son (again, fish, veggies, onions, ginger/garlic for seasoning), and pureed. Easy and efficient. Definitely not a unitasker if you’re thinking a little bit ahead. The one that I have comes with a steamer tray, as most do, and it has a cook/warm button. That’s it.
May 8th, 2008 at 11:32 am
Yes, stovetop rice is easy. Nonetheless, I love my Zojirushi, and use it at least 3 times a week. The best part is that it keeps the rice in perfectly edible condition for a couple of days. I often make enough to have rice for breakfast (like oatmeal) the next day and sometimes lunch.
I would stick with one of the originating brands from Japan or Korea, since they’ve got all the whammy cooking options and fuzzy logic stuff. I’ve had mine for 12 years, and have never had a problem making anywhere from 2 to 10 cups of rice. I say go for it!
May 8th, 2008 at 11:44 am
I use my rice cooker to make rice, because it would take an act of God and Congress for me to be able to come out with anything that even resembles rice using the stovetop method. So I love it for that. But since we had our son 19 months ago, it has also been a big help in feeding him. He ADORES steamed zucchini. It’s no trouble to slice up a zucchini and throw it in the veggie steamer part of the rice cooker (we have the ubiquitous Black & Decker model that everybody registers for at Bed Bath & Beyond — I think it was $35 or so). Takes about six minutes. And I second what phillippa says about not having to keep an eye on this the way you have to keep an eye on the stove vis a vis toddlers.
We never used it to make baby food — not sure why. But the steaming of the veggies is so easy and quick, it probably wouldn’t be much trouble to take the steamed veggies and puree them to the desired consistency. So a rice cooker is definitely worth it!
May 8th, 2008 at 11:44 am
I have the rice cooker in the picture. It’s the best, sooo tiny. You do have to put a little oil in with the rice to keep it from boiling over.
May 8th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
I have the exact rice cooker in the photo - the cuisinart one.
It’s good because:
TOTALLY non-stick, even the little rice scoop they give you!
Perfect rice every time, idiot proof and you do not have to watch it
Great for veggies, dumplings etc.
It’s never boiled over.
Not so good:
if you want to make more than 3-4 cups of rice
Rice cookers may not be one of those ‘essential’ appliances but this one is small and it means you can make rice super-quick and hassle-free.
May 8th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
This is really strange but, I’m really picky about my rice. Like Rosa mentioned above, I too am of Latin descent and all my relatives made rice a certain way, that I could NEVER emulate. So a Japanese friend introduced me to the rice maker - now I have one and the rice maker does it exactly how I like it. I would get it - you can store it somewhere when you’re not using it. WS is too expensive - go for Target!
May 8th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
Rice cookers are great. My stove top rice generally came out fine, but it’s so much easier (and energy efficient in my case) to have an electric rice cooker.
Beware of cheap ones though. I’ve gotten a few as gifts and they are probably the reason many people stick with stove top rice. I wouldn’t recommend Cuisinart. Get a good solid Japanese brand that you probably never heard of. Serious rice eaters in Japan will spend a couple hundred bucks on a top notch rice maker, but you can get a decent one for a little over $100. Zojirushi is great. Check out the reviews on Amazon.
May 8th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
every asian household i know has one (and i don’t have a single asian friend who knows how to cook rice on the stovetop). i don’t think you need to go fancy, though. i use an old one that my family brought over from taiwan ages ago, and it doesn’t do anything fancy. the great thing about some of the less fancy models is that they don’t just cook rice; you can also use it as a steamer and general food warmer. i couldn’t live without mine.
May 8th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
I saw Jamie Oliver boil rice like pasta on “Jamie at Home.” Tried it, love it, will never go back to the traditional stovetop method, and took a rice cooker off my Amazon wishlist. I wonder if it’s sending nutrients down the drain as boiling vegetables does, but in our house rice isn’t something we eat daily or as a large part of any meal, so it doesn’t make me feel too guilty.
May 8th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
We make rice a lot more now that we have one. It cooks any kind of rice flawlessly. Ours is the Krups version. It’s big, but we keep it on top of the fridge.
May 8th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
i am absolutely obsessed with our rice cooker. it has a steamer and slow cooking function as well, although i have yet to use it. every imaginable type of rice comes out perfect, every single time. i was never able to get the rice done correctly on the stove. absolutely recommend purchasing one. its the most used thing in our kitchen, next to our little oscar.
May 8th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
WE have a rice cooker - we use fairly often - we love it - perfect every time…
We also have a slow cooker we love. But it was after we bought the slow cooker that we found out there are slow cookers that double as rice cookers.
But not the other way around. All that said… go for it - ease is what you need when a small child is involved.
May 8th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
I laughed at my boyfriend when he wanted a ricecooker - why on earth spend the $15.00 on another appliance when you can use a pot on the stove? However, tonight I was cooking rice in that very same rice cooker - and the boyfriend? No longer around ;o)
I love being able to come home, throw some rice in the cooker, take the dog on a walk around the neighborhood, and coming back to perfectly cooked rice. I would also say that you do not need an expensive one - like I said, mine cost $15 and it came from the little thai market. I think it’s a panasonic.
May 9th, 2008 at 1:38 am
Erm, I have to ask… aren’t we in the middle of an international rice shortage?! I would hold back on that purchase
May 9th, 2008 at 5:22 am
nice. chad and rice cooker WIN !!!!
bring on the rice cooker!!!
May 9th, 2008 at 6:51 am
Not that you need another comment on this topic, but to address the comments on figuring out how to measure rice to water, the Zojirushi has markings on the inside of the bowl; if you put 1 cup rice, you just fill to the #1 line. You seriously can’t screw it up.
May 9th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
I have the rice cooker in the pic and like it for the most part. I’m not sure if anyone has mentioned this, but if you like to make brown rice, beware…for some reason, the bubbling water likes to seep out of the pot and leak everywhere! This only happens when I cook smaller quantities of brown rice (about 1.5 cups uncooked). Making more seems to help occasionally. However, this rice cooker does white rice perfectly, sans mess.
May 11th, 2008 at 6:26 am
We go through about 50 lbs of rice a year, for two people. Both of us are perfectly capable of making rice on the stove. Our rice cooker (a super cheap tiny Oster model) died from the use we put it through. It had done about 10 years of hard duty, so it was allowed to die.
Our next appliance purchase will be another, larger rice cooker. Both of us are sick and tired of the saucepans always being dirty because we had rice. We’re tired of having a meal and concluding “no rice, there’s nothing to cook it in”.
If you don’t eat much rice, it’s not a sensible purchase. But if rice is a staple, get a rice cooker. Then you’ll *sometimes* have clean saucepans that get used for something other than rice.
May 11th, 2008 at 8:31 am
We use our rice cooker all the time. We have a Zojirushi and I think that as a brand, they are far, far better than anything else around. The quality of the rice is completely different than what you get when you use another rice cooker (I think we used to have an Oster). If you use good sushi rice (like the Koda Farms brown sushi rice which is pretty easy to find out here in CA.) the results are really amazing- we even started eating rice for breakfast after we got this rice cooker. Love it!
May 12th, 2008 at 5:00 am
[...] You are huge fans of rice cookers. At this writing, Angela’s question about buying a rice cooker has been answered with 48 comments, 36 of which are emphatically in [...]
May 14th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
I can’t believe I’m the 49th person to reply to this but I just could’t stay away! I’ve never used one. Instead, I use Mark Bittman’s brilliant recipe………..
I boil a big pot of water and a little salt and add a cup or two of rice.
As soon as it is cooked, I drain it like pasta. No measuring ever and “perfect rice every time”.
Thanks Mark Bittman!!!
May 21st, 2008 at 5:54 am
[...] minutes and serve with yogurt sauce. I dished it out with a simple rice pilaf (made in a pan, not a rice cooker). It was pretty damn yummy, especially the roasted chickpeas that had a nice, nutty crunch. Click [...]
May 21st, 2008 at 7:38 am
I got a rice cooker last summer at a garage sale for two dollars and found myself using it constantly. It made fabulous brown rice, perfectly cooked. I also started using it to cook hot organic oatmeal in the mornings with chopped dried apricots or dried cranberries and it did a great job. I could get ready for work and it would cook on its own. Then I started cooking red lentils, oatmeal in the rice cooker and mixing it with an egg and whole wheat grains (that I’d cooked earlier in the rice cooker and was storing in the fridge) chopped red onion and some hot red pepper flakes and a small shake of italian seasonings and making up veggie burgers and cooking them in some olive oil in a black cast iron pan. The BEST veggie burgers I’ve ever had, yummie! and no cholesteral. Put a slice of cheese on top of these veggie burgers and they are super delicious (put the lid on the pan for a minute and the cheese melts beautifully). That 2 dollars I spent on the rice cooker were well worth it. It is sort of like a slow cooker in that you don’t have to tend it, but much faster and if you think outside the box, a great cooking tool. p.s. red lentils have a spicy taste just by themselves, so that, I think, is why they have become a veggie burger staple at my house (I and both my dogs love them). Plus I do like being able to have perfect brown rice at hand and not have to watch it cook, or even be in the kitchen, very convenient if I need the time for some other activity like walking the dogs, etc. Good luck!!!