Rice aficionados, point me in the right direction!

October 14, 2008 7:33 PM

Is there such a thing as a decent rice cooker for $50-75? Where should I get it? Do cookers with "brown rice" settings work any better for brown rice? Anything else I should know?

My $15 Black and Decker cooker has served me well for around 6 years now, and is really showing no signs of stopping, but it seems like there is always a layer of chewy-crunchy rice at the bottom.
While this isn't a big deal, I feel I've lost a lot of rice over the years, and as I experiment with sushi more often, and cook more brown rice than white, I'm looking to upgrade.
Rice aficionados, point me in the right direction!

posted by piedmont to Food & Drink (16 answers total)

Have you seen the cool tools recomendation? Zojirushi NS-ZAC10 rice cooker. (At $150, its over the budget, but there might be cheaper models from the same company).
posted by acro at 7:44 PM on October 14, 2008

I have that Zojirushi, and yes, the brown rice setting makes awesome brown rice--much better than any I've ever made on the stovetop.
posted by HotToddy at 7:58 PM on October 14, 2008

I'm sorry to report that I hunted for a cheapie and failed (several times). I spent the ~$150 for a fuzzy logic Zojirushi with a brown rice setting and never looked back. And yes, the brown rice setting is important.
posted by chairface at 10:09 PM on October 14, 2008

but it seems like there is always a layer of chewy-crunchy rice at the bottom.

see, you see that as a bug, but in many cultures that's a desirable feature, something people will fight to get at the dinner table! having said that: if you eat a lot of rice, spend the money on the zojirushi and don't look back.
posted by lia at 10:15 PM on October 14, 2008 [1 favorite]

I got a rice cooker 5 years ago at an asian grocery store for around 60 bucks and it works like a champ, in this case cheap was completely fine. I would steer clear of anything you find at Walmart or Target or whatever, get the stuff made somewhere in Asia, it'd be like buying an American made Gyro cooker or something. My parents have gone through 2 cookers in 20 years and I can bet neither cost them more than 100bucks, go for the simple Cook-Keepwarm cooker, you don't need any other functions than that.
posted by BrnP84 at 10:39 PM on October 14, 2008

On a side note my parents use that brown crunchy stuff and mix it with water to make like a porridgy type thing but when they do that they cook rice on the stove in an old rice cooker shell (just the medal part directly on the stove). I remember as a kid I used to eat it dry with a little sugar dusted on it. Another thing is I remembered an episode of Iron Chef a while back, the challenger (Japanese) started criticizing Morimoto for using a rice cooker, he used what looked like an old school clay pot type of thing and said that a real traditionalist doesn't use a rice cooker, but than I guess that guy should've been cooking by fire too.
posted by BrnP84 at 10:52 PM on October 14, 2008

I've has two rice cookers which are gathering dust. Rice cooking only requires a suitable saucepan with a lid, sufficient liquid, and a timer, Ther's not secret or hard work to excellent rice/
posted by Neiltupper at 11:13 PM on October 14, 2008

I have this, which Amazon is listing for me at just over $100.

Anyway, it's pretty much perfectly fantastic.
posted by brina at 11:52 PM on October 14, 2008

Neiltupper is sort of right, but I wish my mother in law had a rice cooker, as despite being an excellent cook otherwise, she murders rice on the stove.
posted by singingfish at 12:50 AM on October 15, 2008

I have the same Sanyo that brina linked to and it's great - it was $89 on sale when I bought it, so if you are patient it might be within your budget. That's about the low end of the "fuzzy logic" rice cookers. If that's over budget, then get another $20 model and live with the crunchy stuff...
posted by mmoncur at 3:22 AM on October 15, 2008

You can pick up a NICE rice cooker by Aroma at Costco for less ~$50. 10 Cup one in fact, and the brown rice turns out fine. I personally don't use the plastic steamer basket and all that but it does everything pretty dandy. It has a non-stick interior which you are going to have to care for but you will not the brown crust bottom. Before people ask, yes I have the expensive fuzzy logic action but I needed something smaller and this one works fine.

The important thing is the quality of the rice. If you want the white rice aesthetic but the brown rice goodness I suggest going to Japanese Hagai rice which is sold in the US by Temaki. It is specially polished to retain the germ of the grain giving you more nutrition than over polished white rice.

The crusty thing you get in your old cooker is considered a delicacy and is way delicious. BUT if it is stuck to an unfinished aluminum bottom then it is full of aluminum which is not tasty nor probably healthy. If you are getting the crusty bottom in a non-stick then your non-stick is no longer working and you are getting again, untasty residue.
posted by jadepearl at 7:03 AM on October 15, 2008 [1 favorite]

According to this NYT article about all things rice cookerish, there's a special word in (I guess) Korean for that crunchy chewy rice layer: okoge. Chefs disdain it but lots of people like it and there's an ice cream flavor for it. My cooker has never produced it, though, so I can't identify.

I have the Zojirushi linked above and love it. It's my cute little anime pod friend on my countertop. It's something you'll have for a long time and get so much use out of, so I say bite the bullet and get it. You'll be happy once you do and will soon forget the price anyway. It's awesome. Ron Popeil would be proud because you can SET IT... AND FORGET IT! No thinking. No watching. No forgetting. A friendly chime tells you it's done and keeps it warm until you're ready.

According to the linked article, you can make all sorts of other stuff in a fuzzy logic cooker too, which could perhaps justify you spending more money on it. There are rice cooker cookbooks out there too - I have The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook but so far have been lazy and haven't really dug into it. Want to though.

I believe the brown rice setting is necessary or at least justified, only because mine handles brown rice very differently than white. It takes a lot longer, so it must require a different method. That's not to say that a single-setting cooker couldn't do it fine, just that these people, who think about rice an awful lot, certainly felt it required different technique. I love the brown rice it turns out.

It's got a programmable timer setting too, so you can tell it when you want it to be ready, like later today or in the morning. I recently started eating mostly brown rice, so this timer function is now really coming in handy given the extended brown rice cycle. It's ready when I get home and stays warm until I finish cooking its accompaniment. I'd wind up eating too late if I didn't start it until I got home.

And if you get one with multiple settings, it will probably have a porridge setting too, and then you can buy steel cut oats and have the best oatmeal of your life. You can set it the night before and wake up to the smell of hot oatmeal that has just been prepared for you. It beats any alarm clock. Go Zojirushi!
posted by kookoobirdz at 7:32 AM on October 15, 2008

I use a Black and Decker Flavor Scenter vegetable steamer with a removable plastic bowl that's meant for cooking rice. Actually, brown rice is what I use it for about nine times out of ten. No crunchy layer on the bottom, and the one I googled up goes for $35.
posted by clavicle at 7:50 AM on October 15, 2008

That NYTimes article is really good. I think the brown rice setting is good because then you can just stick the rice and water in there and forget it. If you have a regular ($35) rice cooker, you sometimes (depending on the age of the rice) have to add more water and restart the cooker. (There is more info here, the NYTimes did a whole thing on rice with multiple blog posts). The Zojirushi machines do a good job with brown rice. In my roommate's Zojirushi, the rice comes out like white rice, except brown -- fluffy, not dry or rubbery. However, for me it's not worth the cost. I don't mind babysitting the rice a bit and adding more water.
posted by bluefly at 8:31 AM on October 15, 2008

Response by poster: Thanks all! I bit the bullet and got an open box Zojirushi from Amazon for a $100. I got the 3 cup model because I really don't like the amount of rice I tend to waste with larger cookers.
Now if anyone has some creative uses for a full on whiz-bang fuzzy logic rice cooker with sweet, sticky, brown, white, and porridge settings, that would be great! Otherwise, I'll be experimenting.
posted by piedmont at 9:11 AM on October 21, 2008

I realize that I'm coming to this a few days late, but I just bought a Panasonic 'neuro fuzzy' rice cooker (5.5 cup) from Newegg for $60 shipped, and it's still available (as of 10/23) for that price. At that price, it's a steal compared to the Zojirushi and Sanyo competitors.

It has most of the features as the other ones: timer, brown, soft, regular, quick and sushi rice modes, automatic keep warm, reheat cycle, etc. It is missing some of the cooking modes of the higher-end models, specifically rinse-free, sprouted rice, porridge, risotto or cake. The only thing I see myself missing is a porridge setting; the rest are pretty meh. The odd thing is it has porridge lines in the bowl, and it mentions porridge in passing in the manual, but there's no setting for it and no instructions on how to make it with one of the other settings. I'll probably just have to experiment a bit. The manual, by the way, is awful, which is apparently a tradition among Japanese-style rice cookers.

So far, all I've done is one load of brown rice and steamed one cauliflower, and if did impressively better than my stovetop technique at both. The brown rice was fluffy and soft, and the cauliflower was even throughout with no hard spots or mushy sections.
posted by boaz at 5:39 PM on October 23, 2008