Fuzzy logic rice cookers (2016) | Hacker News Reader

Fuzzy logic rice cookers (2016)

fivethirtyeight.com

64 pointshenning81 comments

Last time rice cookers were discussed on HN I opined that all you really need is a decent (so, _not_ a $20 model) rice cooker made by a Chinese or Japanese manufacturer (e.g. Tiger), with a simple on-off switch.

Mine cooks white rice and brown rice perfectly, although I am supposed to soak the brown rice first (though it's still fine even if I don't). I suppose the only real improvement between my model and the new ones is that perhaps the rice cooker will soak the rice for you.

You can vary the amount of water to play with different textures, but once you have it dialed in, it's pretty hands-off.

I feel that these manufacturers try to pass off the new-and-shiny only because they have to. The old models last forever. In fact, the only reason why my last rice cooker broke is because gunk got stuck in the switch and it was not able to turn off automatically. In all other respects, the design is as simple and elegant as can be. A single circuit controlling a heating element, which automatically shuts off once a certain temperature threshold is reached.

Lastly, for those with one of those fuzzy-logic rice cookers, can you make scorched rice (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorched_rice)? I didn't think so :)

The Wirecutter had this to say about their main pick (Zojirushi NS-ZCC10, currently US$ 170)

> Rice made in the Neuro Fuzzy can seem like a work of art: firm, slender, intact, and milky white. Each grain plumps nicely without bursting and doesn’t seem to break when scooped out of the pot. In our tests, the Neuro Fuzzy was one of the few machines that made sushi rice, brown rice, and long-grain rice all taste great. Of all the machines we tested, this model produced the best basmati, cooking it up light and fluffy. By comparison, our upgrade pick, the Cuckoo CRP-G1015F, made overly moist long-grain white rice.

* https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/the-best-rice-cooker/

The main complaint is that it took longer than most other models.

They also have a US$ 45 budget pick. America's Test Kitchen / Cook’s Illustrated also has a preferred model (Aroma):

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uABJWCGrFPo

It's also worth considering whether just getting a multicooker (aka Instant Pot) may be the better option. Given it can also do pressure cooking and act as a slow cooker, the latest models are pretty good jack-of-all trades:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGLX40ge4zQ

Finally Zojirushi is most favorite reliable appliance brand available in Japan for me. Nowadays I always buy Zojirushi product if it exists in category. Never looked back after bought. I also suggest Zojirushi's thermos bottle.

I bought the Zojirushi thermos bottles per recommendations on the Internet, but found that the silicon seals take on the smell of coffee and/or tea very easily. And once the smell is on them, it's impossible to remove. While Zojirushi does sell spare parts, the cost is usually not worth it.

I have a slow cooker, a rice maker, and pressure cooker--none of which I use that much. I'm guessing that an Instant Pot--even if not optimal for at least a couple of those uses--would be a better choice if I were starting over.

I just bought an Aroma pressure cooker [0] to replace our 15yo Aroma rice cooker that had reached its end of life after multiple uses per week (the cord and the lid latch both broke within a couple months of each other). It does a great job with the rice, but making a meal that requires both a pressure cooker and a rice cooker requires some advance scheduling.

[0] https://www.aroma-housewares.com/kitchen/appliances/MTC-8016...

> (Zojirushi NS-ZCC10, currently US$ 170)

Why does this model take longer than other brands/models?

Is it doing something special with its neuro fuzzy logic?

Probably a big part is that it soaks the rice (with no heat) for an extended period before cooking. I think the soaking is roughly a third of the total cooking time.

my zoji has a quick cooking option that makes ok rice, its just not as fluffy as the long way.

I love my Zojirushi fuzzy logic rice cooker, mainly for the keep-warm. I can put several cups into the cooker and eat off it for several days. Also, yes my cooker has a Scorch setting.

And don’t forget the value add of it playing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star when the rice is ready. At least that’s what mine does, lol.

Are you sure about that? Mine plays Twinkle Twinkle Little Star when you turn the rice cooker on. It plays a different tune when the rice is ready. ;-)

Hah! Well, point taken :)

However, I have always been told not to keep rice in the rice cooker for days at a time, for health reasons. If it's warm, I'd imagine it's an even better environment for bacterial/spore growth.

> However, I have always been told not to keep rice in the rice cooker for days at a time, for health reasons. If it's warm, I'd imagine it's an even better environment for bacterial/spore growth.

IIRC, the reason Zojirushi gives for not keeping rice warm for too long is that it will get yellow and hard. I don't think they mentioned food safety concerns. Mine does have a small vent hole, so I guess the moisture must escape eventually.

I believe it is kept at a high enough temp that bacteria cannot survive.

An entire continent full of kitchens keeps rice in cookers/warmers for days at a time. There us just no there there.

Watch out for Bacillus cereus

Thanks for that tidbit, I had to look it up. This wiki page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacillus_cereus) says, "Germination and growth generally occur between 10 °C and 50 °C, though some strains can grow at low temperatures". I just measured the rice in my Zojirushi cooker, and it read 70 °C.

But presumably the GP isn't keeping the rice cooker on keep warm for days. All the moisture would be lost. Safer to refrigerate cooked rice.

Whether they are or not: it is absolutely something that is fairly commonly done. Sealed cookers can do it pretty well, the rice is essentially fine for that long (safety aside).

I think that's exactly what GP is doing

Keep warm settings on rice cookers keep the rice above 60C to avoid bacterial or fungal growth.

I use the keep warm setting on a rice cooker for another reason: To make black garlic. Take 20 bulbs of good quality garlic, put it in the rice cooker, set it on "keep warm" (NOT cook!) for two weeks without opening the lid. Note the rice cooker will be useless for anything else after this because you'll never get rid of the ingrained garlic smell.

Do you leave it on 'keep warm' for days?

Cooking rice for some large portion of the global population is like cooking pasta noodles, meaning for some people, the fuzzy logic and other advanced features are worth $300+ especially when they cook rice every single day.

Well, if we're going to root for the simplest technology, then I have to say that I've never owned a rice cooker, I cook a lot of rice in a pot, brown rice, black rice, red rice, basmati, long-grain, short-grain, etc, and I've never thought I needed a machine to cook it to perfection. Just any random pot with boiling water seems to do the job well most of the time. So why do I need to replace my old pot with a rice-cooking-robot-with-fuzzy-logic (or just a thermostat throwing a switch)?

Edit: Of course my random pot can make Persian-style crunchy rice too... :)

I've used a cheapo Aroma rice cooker for most of my life and I think the rice tastes awesome. I've never questioned what I'm missing out on until I read this article. Sure, the fuzzy-logic sounds like a big selling point, but now I'm questioning how much better the rice actually tastes with the smarts built into these more expense cookers (vs me just thinking the rice is better because more work went into its automated cooking).

I think what would be interesting, is if a rice cooker not only performed the cooking part well that we all expect, but also percolated the rice to reduce the amount of arsenic in it.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-05-uk-rice-breaches-limi...

Yeah, whoever makes this product will make a lot of money. Another issue is that amount of rice products on the market especially for babies/children. Do those get arsenic testing regularly?

I used to hate brown rice, but my Zojirushi cooker has a "Gaba Brown" setting that pre soaks the rice for 2 hours at 104F. Make brown rice tolerable for me.

I used to think I need to get used to brown rice because it's healthier although I never liked it much. Now that I know that whole grain rice/wheat/... in general contains higher amounts of toxins (for instance arsenic in rice) I can safely consume regular rice and wheat with less of a bad conscience :)

source?

"the concentration of inorganic arsenic is generally higher in brown, compared with white, rice grain"

however

"the predicted lifetime cancer risk is 34 cases/million for white rice, compared with 5.4 cases/million for brown rice" where "higher risk associated with white rice is primarily a function of the higher consumption of this product."

"the predicted lifetime cancer risk from consuming one serving per day of white basmati rice is 82 cases per million, while the predicted cancer risk from consuming one serving per day of brown basmati rice is 139 cases per million."

so your mileage may vary

https://www.fda.gov/files/food/published/Arsenic-in-Rice-and...

Kind of odd to have this here and arguments about the accuracy using "gradient descent" vs "back propagation" both on the same HN front page. Fuzzy Logic is mostly a marketing term, and although it may still exist other machine learning/estimation tools exist that seem to completely subsume it. If I remember correctly some fundamental aspects of fuzzy-set theory are still unproven and possibly shown undecidable.

To be honest this is more a hearkening back to the 90s retro take on The Beloved Old Fuzzy Logic of yesteryear and ignoring it's rot of irrelevance than any actual evaluation of the technology... "The smartest appliance I have ever owned". A spring and a magnet do almost as well.

"If I remember correctly some fundamental aspects of fuzzy-set theory are still unproven and possibly shown undecidable."

If I remember correctly, and I may not, fuzzy logic fell out of mathematical interest when it was proved all fuzzy logic statements can be converted into conventional logic statements without loss, by adding some additional terms representing various ranges of values, e.g., if we have a sensor $T that senses the temperature in a range from 0.0 - 1.0, the fuzzy statement

     if $T > .6 then TurnOffBurner else TurnOnBurner

can be converted to the conventional-logic statements

     $TAbove0.6 -> TurnOffBurner
     $TBelow0.6 -> TurnOnBurner

With the obvious mapping of what the two values on the left are.

Proving that the entire logic can be so converted is less trivial as the statements interact but IIRC it was done.

The whole hype of fuzzy logic is, well, how it was presented in this article, that it could somehow deal with the real world better than conventional logic. The proof that there was nothing it could say that conventional logic couldn't ended that conclusively.

However, it can still be a useful "programming API", for obvious reasons. But then, you don't really need a specialized "fuzzy logic" necessarily, for a lot of tasks, a big set of if statements based on non-boolean values (which, you know, are easy to come by in programming languages) does the same job. While expressing it directly in fuzzy logic might open up some mathematical analysis possibilities, expressing it in conventional programming languages opens up a lot of software engineering possibilities, so shrug. This is just another expression of the decades-long and ongoing arguments about how mathematical programming really is.

You're probably thinking of fuzzification and defuzzification, which are engineering steps.

Mathematicians have continued to make hay with the family of "monotone measures", of which probability, fuzzy logic, belief functions and so on are particular members.

That I can express a problem geometrically or algebraically doesn't make one of them less useful or inspiring.

Yes, that matches my memory... "anything you can do with fuzzy logic, I can do more generically with regular logic and a few extra states".

> Fuzzy Logic is mostly a marketing term

And it's a terrible marketing term. If it had been called "continuum logic" instead, there'd probably be much less disdain.

The number of people I've heard mention "fuzzy logic" when lauding their Zojirushi rice cookers would suggest that it is at least a very memorable marketing term.

They would've lauded "continuum logic" just as heartily. But everyone else sees "fuzzy logic" and immediately makes jokes or dismisses it out of hand.

Names matter.

I started using the old-fashioned analogue rice cooker after watching Technology Connection's video on how they work.

The principle is clever: liquids at boiling point stay at boiling point, since any additional heat energy is used to change their state from liquid to gas. When the temperature does rise above 100°C, that means there is no liquid left in the cooker, and so rice must be done. It then switches off the high heat and runs in "warm" mode.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSTNhvDGbYI

It's more clever than just this, though. My Zojirushi rice cooker has a timer, so it seems to know how far along the process is and speed it up...or it lies, pads the cook time by 10 min, and keeps it warm.

"Fuzzy" rice cookers have been around for decades, I (and my parents, and pretty much everyone I know) have always regarded it as a marketing slogan.

That's not to say high-end rice cookers aren't worth it, there's a world of difference between a $100 and $500 rice cooker. Not sure how best to explain this, but rice from a cheap cooker looks and feels like a dense, gooey chunk, whereas rice from a high-end cooker forms a complex, airy 3D structure with a distinctive sheen; individual grains still retain their shape, and there's ample space between them resulting in a well-defined but light texture.

Ummm that just sounds like the wash wasn't washed a lot before cooking in the first case, right?

Are there $100 or $500 commercial units? The best reviewed rice cooker by America's Test Kitchen is $30.

Yes! Just checked, and the most popular model on kakaku.com (Japanese price comparison site) right now is around $300. Ours was around $400, maybe not the best but we're pretty satisfied with it.

I'm pretty happy with the rice from my $140 Aroma multicooker. I can even get away with only one cup min if I need to instead of two but quality suffers a little

There are even $1000 models, pressure-cooking claypot models whereby the pot has a layer of metal sandwiched in clay and is heated up by induction. Good stuff.

Luckily, not sold where I am, so it's not even an option :)

I have a $200 consumer unit, an upgrade from a $30 unit and it is so much better as to be almost uncomparable. We went from eating rice maybe twice a year to eating it twice a week, just plain old bulk calrose rice and our Zojirushi.

Huge differences between $100 vs $300 (in Japan market) is IH heater and pressure feature, not just controlling.

$200 supports IH heater for efficient heating (Efficiency is important because japanese outlet is max 1500W). $300 supports IH and pressuring.

What are the differences? I have an old Zojirushi without those features and haven’t really been sure what an upgrade could improve.

IH = high power and uniform heating, pressuring = makes rices softer and viscous, but still remains somewhat tough.

Generally high power is considered to important for Japanese people to make delicious rice, I highly recommend it if it's affordable.

Pressuring is a bit controversial because some people not like softer rice, so some maker (Mitsubishi) still make high-end rice cooker without pressuring.

Somewhat off-topic, but I find that Zoji Neuro Fuzzy rice cooker linked in the article[1] extraordinarily ugly — it looks more like a medical device than a kitchen appliance to me.

It's interesting to me that while Japanese design is generally very much appreciated and admired in the west, there are some areas where their design just doesn't translate to western aesthetics — and, at least to an outsider's perspective, seems almost an antithesis to the idea of Japanese design.

I'm thinking also of the recent article [2] about Japanese web design.

1: http://www.zojirushi.com/app/product/nszcc

2: https://randomwire.com/why-japanese-web-design-is-so-differe...

The Western kitchen aesthetic is very industrial: bulky appliances of stainless steel, maybe a dab of glossy paint. The KitchenAid mixer is a classic example: https://www.kitchenaid.sg/countertop-appliances/stand-mixers...

But in space-constrained Japan, easy to clean white plastic is standard and the hydrocephalic robot look (like the example you link to) considered high-tech.

Well recent high end rice cooker design has trended towards black square designs like this $500 Hitachi https://www.amazon.co.jp/日立-圧力スチームIHジャー炊飯器（5-5合炊き）-フロストブラックH... but in general there are lots of ugly plastic objects in Japan. I think the design elements we appreciate in the West is a subset filtered through tastemakers who brought it over.

To be fair, it's cheapest product on lineup. I don't know expensive one is better design or not.

It's unclear to me what this has to do with fuzzy logic, other than clever marketing.

Yeah, not seeing it either. The article says this:

"In my current fuzzy-logic cooker, however, I tell the machine what kind of rice I’m using and how long it has been soaking. It takes that information and decides what temperature it should reach, and for how long. Generally using what are essentially if/then statements, it can fine-tune the process. For example, it can take into account the surrounding air temperature and turn the heating element up or down to compensate."

At best, that's a rules engine. Nothing fuzzy.

> At best, that's a rules engine. Nothing fuzzy.

It is a rule engine, with fuzzy rules.

The advantage is that it's easy to express vague rules in a clear way: "if the rice is too hot, stop the heater", vs "if sensor a > 0.44 and sensor b < 3.19 and sensor c >= 0.33 ...".

It disentangles the rules operating on linguistic variables from the functions which express those values.

Is every program with variables a "fuzzy logic" program?

Is my thermostat a fuzzy-logic air conditioner?

> Is every program with variables a "fuzzy logic" program?

No. The point is not that a variable can take many distinct values, it's that it may have multiple values with differing degrees of membership.

"John's height is 178cm" is a crisp statement. It comes from a crisply measurable domain, being length. I can verify if it's true or false, to a given level of precision.

"John is medium tall height" is not a crisp statement. It represents that John is partly "medium" and partly "tall", at the same time.

I believe it's considered "fuzzy logic" because there is a range that is constantly being imprecisely evaluated and acted upon, eventually arriving at the desired goal.

For example, the weight sensor can deduce that water is evaporating from the bowl of rice (because the weight is gradually lifting), but it doesn't exactly know how much weight is rice and how much of it is water until near the end.

Hell, the description you quoted makes it seem like just a PID controller.

Same. Perhaps it’s really saying that it’s a rule set they derived with fuzzy logic?

Either way, I came to the comments to see if anyone is explaining how it uses/applies fuzzy logic.

And did you know that rice cookers can be used not only to cook rice or congee?

They are also very good at reheating all kinds of bread, in a way that you simply can't achieve in a conventional oven.

Just stick your baguette or whatever in there, sprinkle a bit of water at the bottom if you want (not on the bread), and hit the cook button. When the rice cooker says it's done, you get back the most amazing reheated bread.

You can even bake a cake!

Nonsense about "fuzzy logic" aside, Zojirushi rice cookers are great. I currently own two, plus a third Tiger rice cooker that I use for making black garlic.

One of my Zojirushi rice cookers is also a mochi maker (BS-ED10-WA). Fresh mochi in the morning is fantastic. You have to be able to buy the special mochi rice - I once tried English pudding rice but it didn't work.

I have a zojirushi cooker that has served me well for nearly 10 years with no signs of giving up. I use it for all kinds of stuff, all the time. I spent around $250 CAD on it 8 years ago, and considering how convenient and high quality its results are it has been great value. If it broke I’d do a bit of research to see how he market has changed, but I suspect I’d end up buying another zojirushi. Maybe even the same model.

My fuzzy logic rice cooker is one of the electronic purchases that has brought me the most joy in the past 10 years. Every time I use it I'm always surprised just how nice the rice tastes out of it.

$125 for my zoji that I've used at least 4 times a week for the last decade is significant value that you just don't see out of most appliances anymore. I'm more impressed by the reliability than the cooking tech (though it makes wonderful rice of course).

You can still simulate the old ways without electrical circuits. Just put one of these seemingly primordial devices on your stove and adjust the heat and time to your likening.

http://www.umic-all.com/products/kinsei_kamadaki/index.html

For anyone from India, have you found any fuzzy logic or above average rice cookers here? Everyone eats rice and most homes have rice cookers, and yet it's impossible to find a zhojirushi. Only cheap shitty local brand cookers seem to be available here (except via shady sellers from Amazon)!

This Thai cooking Youtuber did a blind taste test between the Aroma rice cooker and the Zojirushi Fuzzy Logic cooker: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YBYm8FTXro

TL;DR: The differences are detectable but not huge. If you eat plenty of rice, it's plausibly worth the upgrade but it's not life changing.

One key factor is the kind of rice. In my experience, the difference in brown rice is bigger than in white rice, so if you usually eat brown rice, you'll get more benefit from upgrading to a Zojirushi rice cooker. It's easy to make good-enough white rice, but making good brown rice is hard.

Tangentially related - does anyone have any experience cooking basmati rice in newer Zojirushi (Micom/IH models)?

I've been looking at getting one and the info varies, even the official one for the same model! I can do it on a stove top, not an issue, just wanted to kill two birds with one stone.

Also, while at it - any opinions on the pressure cooking mode in NP-NWC/NVC models? Looks tempting... but gimmicky at the same time.

I have a Zojirushi rice cooker and basmati rice is practically the only type of rice I ever eat.

It's basically the same as cooking white rice, although it takes a bit more water. Do a batch or two as an experiment.

Cook it like it's white rice, and if it comes out too dry, experiment with adding a bit more water next time you cook it. Eventually you will figure out the ideal water line for your taste preferences. You just have to remember it!

If you're mainly cooking basmati rice, you might have a look at a Persian rice cooker, e.g. https://www.amazon.com/pars-khazar-rice-cooker/s?k=pars+khaz... . I don't believe it's fuzzy logic based, but it's designed to have butter or oil added and has a setting for a crispy bottom.

I've been having Indian Basmati rice cooked in a Zojirushi Micom rice cooker and it's been great. I feel like I have to add a little more water than the official measure to get it to be a little more softer. I've also added tempering i.e. Tadka - oil/ghee with cumin into the cooker after adding rice and water and the rice comes out fragrant and fluffy would recommend it.

I cook costco basmati in my zoji on the 'white' and 'harder' setting and it comes out fine. Less aromatic than my preferred jasmine rice but still great, distinct firm grains.

I have a fancy zoji. The main draw for me is that I don’t need to babysit it. ie Switches to keep warm and stay that way for hours without ruining the rice

Meanwhile I nearly electrocuted myself with a cheap one off amazon.

My zojirushi is my favourite device I’ve bought this decade. I squeezed it into carry on at SIN.

Next: my 10kg plastic asvel rice dispenser. “Indispensable”.

I own Zojirushi NS-ZAH18 model; Sad thing this rice cooker parts are unavailable now;

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