Rice cooker replacement pots

January 20, 2022 8:13 AM

I have an old Sanyo ECJ-S35K rice cooker which works great, but the inner pot is starting to peel. Has anyone had success mixing inner pot brands, or do I finally just buy a new Zojirushi and call it good? Rice cooker says it's 0.63 L capacity (3.5 cup-sized pot)
posted by curious nu to Technology (11 answers total)

Here's a person who had success with a slightly smaller but apparently perfectly fitting Zojirushi bowl as a replacement. And here's that part on Amazon, though it's for a stout $86.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:22 AM on January 20, 2022

I mean, on the one hand, I hate creating waste and I tend to just repair things. On the other, that's a large percentage of the cost of a new Zojirushi, so...
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:35 AM on January 20, 2022 [1 favorite]

Here to say that a Zojirushi was one of the top five all-time best purchases for the kitchen I ever made. Used at least 2-3x/week for the last ten years. I hate waste, but also I really think Zojis are almost BIFL.
posted by SinAesthetic at 8:51 AM on January 20, 2022 [2 favorites]

Yeah, our “neuro fuzzy” Zojirushi must be going on 20 years old, and afaik it’s still the current model, because it works perfectly and never dies. It will meet your rice cooking needs for a long, long time.
posted by mumkin at 9:41 AM on January 20, 2022 [1 favorite]

Get the Zojirushi. I don't think you'll ever regret it. It was one of the kitchen gadgets I never would have bought, but my wife had it when we started dating. If it breaks or something I wouldn't even consider another brand at this point.
posted by jzb at 9:50 AM on January 20, 2022

Response by poster: Just to be clear, I use my rice cooker at least once a week, have done so for about fifteen years, and love it to bits, so this wasn't so much "sell me on a Zojirushi" so much as "should I just get a new rice cooker, which are all a culinary workhorse main-course tour-de-force."

All mark this one as answered. :)
posted by curious nu at 11:35 AM on January 20, 2022 [1 favorite]

I recently had to make the same decision, and could not find a replacement (small) pot for less than the price of a (non fancy) cooker.
The old one is a kettle for wood steaming now.
posted by Acari at 11:53 AM on January 20, 2022

Check on Ali Express, search "rice cooker replacement pot" and you'll get loads of options, with the dimensions very clearly specified so you can make sure you get the right size.
posted by essexjan at 12:05 PM on January 20, 2022

I also had a Sanyo rice cooker and wanted to replace the pot instead of buying a replacement. I ended up buying a Zojirushi. The Sanyo cooked rice so much faster, and it was the perfect size for two people but finding a replacement pot in a pandemic was a lot of work. No way was I going to trust Ali Express would send me the right thing.
posted by fiercekitten at 1:17 PM on January 20, 2022

One word of caution if you do get a Zojirushi is to make sure you get one with a pan that's easy to replace in the area where you live. I'm in the UK and bought an NS-TSQ10 just over four years ago. The pan is now getting pretty scratched at the bottom and I cannot find a replacement pan anywhere, either imported at an extortionate fee or from a local reseller. The only licensed UK reseller will only sell me a replacement pan if I bought the rice cooker from them in the first place, which I did not. I also can't find any pans for other brands of machine that seem like they'd fit the one I've got.

I regret not doing more due diligence on pan availability over here before buying the model that I did, as I'll probably end up replacing the whole thing (with all the unnecessary waste & expense that will entail) when the pan is finally unusable. It's a great rice cooker and I love it, to the point that I'd probably suck it up and pay half the machine cost (£100 or so) to import a replacement pan if I could find one that would ship here, but I can't.
posted by terretu at 2:18 PM on January 20, 2022

I hate throwing stuff out especially if I can fix or hack something together, but... yeah, get a Zoji neuro fuzzy.
posted by porpoise at 6:45 PM on January 20, 2022