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>Zojirushi seems to be the market leader these days

They also make the best insulated bottles. It's completely besides the point but I felt compelled to talk about it, a good bottle is a game changer when you're drinking tea or coffee at your desk all day long.

I appreciate the comment and I’ll look into one.

confirmed... I have like 5 of them. easy to open the lid and keeps coffee warm for like 2 days

If you have an electric kettle, you can sidestep this problem -- add boiling water and keep the stovetop flame on low the whole time. Then it's just a matter of turning off the heat at 15 minutes and uncovering at 20.

I will admit, despite how trivial it may sound, that it is nice not having to worry about turning off the heat. It means you can walk away and get into some other task more deeply.

However, I don't think I'll ever buy another rice cooker, as a pressure cooker can do the same thing but is a more general tool.

I am a pressure cooker proselytizer. Seriously, they can cook dehydrated beans in 35 minutes-no soaking required.

However, rice does poorly with my model. The grains are too small and can become lodged in the safety features.

Your comment just inspired a flurry of research on my end which resulted in purchasing a $200 air-fryer pressure-cooker combo (highly unusual behavior for my scrupulous self). Expecting good things to come and ultra excited for it. Any tips on things to cook, favorites, etc? Thank you for your post. :)

Stock. If you don’t care about crystal clear stock then a pressure cooker can do it in like 10% of the time needed on the stove.

Do you put the rice directly into the pressure cooker? Using a separate vessel inside the cooker, with some additional water in the cooker works much better.

My mother has always cooked rice directly in pressure cooker without any issue. To ensure security, the water level should be no more than half the height of the cooker (same with every food, the pressure cooker must not be filled too much).

I have a Japanese pressure cooker slow cooker combo. Apart from a a fuze blowing the day of warranty expiration, I am very happy with it. It cooks white rice in 8 mins (+washing time and cool down time). If it wasn't always full with other stuff I would never use my rice cooker.

I’m not sure I really eat rice regularly enough to justify the “expense” of a rice cooker (it was a pretty cheap one, and the only feature is the curie point thing. Works like a charm tho!)

BUT, I’ve gotten a lot of ridicule and pushback from friends and family, as if it’s somehow “cheating“ not to cook your rice in a pot/pan..

These people are all northern europeans... what do they know about rice???

I try to point out how common these appliances are in (at least some) actual rice eating cultures, but they’re usually pretty skeptical about the whole idea.

I’m just happy to get great rice every time!

There are other forms of costs it introduces besides strictly the monetary cost of the device itself.

IMO the Korean brands are the market leaders. Check out Cuckoo

Panasonic makes good ones as well.

Going on twelve years here. One thing I can't make is Japanese pancakes though. If anybody knows what kind of pots are best for those, I'm interested.

Mine is a Panasonic and I’ve been using it for thirteen years now. It’s bulletproof and cooks rice like a champ.

I was told by a rice cooker salesperson (in Asia) that Korean brands should be avoided if you plan to cook brown rice. Apparently brown rice isn’t eaten in Korea so the machines don’t have a brown rice setting.

I don’t know if the former is true but the latter seemed to be on the ones I saw.

i’m no rice expert but i really don’t think you need a special cooker for brown rice in my experience. just a different ratio of water to rice. it isn’t special

Brown rice takes significantly longer to cook, so the rice cooker might not be programmed to do that.

With the simplest rice cookers, there's no programming. When the water is gone, it is gone.

yep, i just add more water and the brown rice turns out fine. though i’m sure fancy 200 dollar zojirushi ones probably do it better, i’m happy with simplicity

Why would the rice cooker need to be programmed for it, though? For any given quantity of rice, the two variables during cooking is the amount of water and the power of the heating element[1].

It is known that brown rice requires a different ratio of water, but this is something that can be replicated with any method. Does the special brown rice setting change the heat output of the rice cooker?

[1]: Fancy rice cookers use non-constant power, or so I've heard. Not sure how much it influences the taste, though.

Korea here. Brown rice is fairly common, and every rice cooker I've seen (except the very cheapest) has a setting for brown and/or mixed rice.

If the salesperson wasn't lying, he was probably referring to other cultivars of rice, not just brown rice. For example, long grain rice obviously requires different settings than short grain rice. Southeast and South Asia have much more diversity of rice than Northeast Asia.

My Cuckoo definitely has a brown rice setting. It works pretty well fwiw

Funny cause I got a cuckoo based on an Amazon review that said it cooked the best brown rice. YMMV I guess.

We have a cuckoo rice cooker in Sweden (purchased in Korea). It is great!

Our cuckoo is a preassure cooker, and the rice it makes is the best I’ve had.

We currently live in Tokyo, and the Panasonic we got here is not as good as the cuckoo. Maybe because the power here is weaker?

The Japanese Kamado referred to in the article is related to Korean Gamasot [1][2], with one crucial difference. The Korean version has a heavy, close-fitting, holeless iron lid that helps maintain a higher-than-atmospheric pressure inside the cooking vessel.

Higher pressure = higher boiling point = higher cooking temperature = different taste.

Korean rice cookers modeled after the Gamasot are basically autoclaves. The good ones maintain a pressure of about 2 atm and a cooking temperature of 120C. Unpressurized rice cookers are more common in Japan, and Japanese people are more used to the texture of rice cooked at 100C. Your sushi probably won't taste right if you cook the rice at 120C.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamado

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamasot

Good info! I didn’t know this :)

How would you describe the difference in taste?

It's subjective, but I'd say that rice cooked under pressure is more chewy and has a stronger flavor of its own. The higher temperature produces a more pronounced Maillard reaction, which not only increases flavor but also turns the rice slightly yellow as if it had been toasted. This is exactly what you want in a strongly flavored Korean dish like stone-bowl bibimbap.

Rice cooked without pressure comes out light and fluffy. This is more appropriate for sushi where you don't want the flavor of rice to overwhelm or collide with the subtle flavor of the other ingredients.

No affiliation, but I got a good (and now heavily used) rice cooker from this company; apparently it’s the same manufacturer as the Cuckoo models: https://www.yumasia.co.uk/sakura-multifunction-rice-cooker-w...

>>For people that regularly eat rice, buying a decent rice cooker is really a no-brainer.

I use Instant Pot. It's not as good as a rice cooker, but most of the time the difference isn't noticeable, and the benefit is that you can cook a LOT more things in it than just rice. Great if you have limited counter space in your kitchen.

Xiaomi rice cooker is the best, I own a few and it really is great. The pot is not thin steel.

I miss my old Panasonic copper rice cooker that I had in Japan. :( Gave it away.

Which model did you get? I see three different ones on amazon ...