Virtually any model of Zojirushi. It pretty much is the Japanese standard of excellence when it comes to rice cookers.
EDIT: I am specifically referring to their “Micom” cookers. I can’t personally speak to the simpler ones.
Second this. There’s a reason you find them and nothing else in all corners of Asian society. I fucking love mine and rarely needs to be cleaned heavily outside the Teflon pot
Micom
Interesting that thing looks like it has a pretty tight seal around the interior pot. How is it with getting rice water crust around the hinge the plastic channel around the lid? Mine is always getting nasty, and it’s hard to get into those tight spaces to clean.
I’ve had mine for 4 years, and never had to really clean anything except the interior removable pot and pressure lid. And that takes all of 2-3 mins.
We have a simple one (push a single button and walk away style) and love it. It’s not that much different from the cheap $20 we got at the store, but the quality of the insert is much higher.
Zojirushi. Bifl and their website you can buy replacement parts if needed iirc. I bought a replacement lid for a 10 year old water boiler from their website.
I had to replace my bowl because my kids used metal spoons on it so much the coating was coming off. Annoying but great that I could buy a part for a 12 yo machine.
My single annoyance is the non replaceable battery. It lasted a decade, but I had to desolder it from the board to replace it. I ended up replacing the battery with a battery holder I got off ebay, so in several years when I have to replace it again I won’t have to solder anything.
Technology Connections (YouTube channel) did an examination on rice cookers.
Spoiler: you only need one of the cheapest rice cookers out there to make perfect rice every time, so long as you get the water ratio correct.
I just watched the whole thing and he didn’t say a single thing about how to get the water ratio right and I just wasted ten minutes of my life
Look up that ratio. For any given altitude that ratio is going to be the same whether you make your rice in one of these pots, an expensive Zojirushi, or in a plain pot on the stove.
Is that what he meant? So the fact that I live at 800m is what’s fucking up my rice?!?
Yeah, I saw that and followed his advice. My rice is great, but cleaning the cooker is a pain.
Basically anything by Zojirushi.
The cheaper NHS-10 or NSH-18 if you just want one with a lever and will eat the rice as soon as it finishes
Anything from the Micom line if you want to be able to keep the rice warm if you’re waiting on someone else to get home before you eat (also, it sings a cute little song).The cheaper NHS is easier to clean, but does not keep rice like the Micoms.
I’ve used the Micom (NS-LGC05 I think) 5-7 times a week for 10+ years
i go regular pot. had a cheap rice cooker but hated cleaning it.
Married into an Asian family so rice cookers are used all day. We tried a few of the 50 dollar ones. They were OK but the rice tended to overcook and sometimes even burn on the bottom. Then I got my wife a zojirushi neuro fuzzy. I don’t recall any household item that has pleased her more than this cooker in our 22 years together. Perfect rice every time, easy to clean. The only issue we had was the inner lid gasket wore out. But we really do abuse this cooker. It is used so much. Zojirushi customer service shipped us a new inner lid for a reasonable price.
Get a duo pressure cooker. You will be able to have whute rice ready in about 20 min and you can cook almost anything in it, not just rice
My normal rice cooker makes rice in 15 min. $25 Oster.
Ok but can you cook a roast in it, or a soup, or roasted potatoes?
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Do you care about exposure to potentially toxic/carcinogenic materials? Asian (especially Japanese) rice cookers such as Zoujirushi do an excellent job, but AFAIK they all utilize non-stick pots (Teflon).
It looks like you can buy aftermarket inner pots that don’t have teflon. I tried poking around the website here in Japan and it looks like the new ones use a different coating (there was something in the news about teflon a couple years ago so this is entirely possible), but I can’t be sure without downloading and pouring through manuals. You could probably do the same on Zojirushi’s US website.
Yeah, I’m not super into teflon. This is the only piece of teflon cookware that I have left. Makes me think that I might want to try something like a ceramic or stainless rice cooker.
I use a regular steel pot, works great :D
I’d say an InstantPot. Stainless steel pot, very easy to clean, versatile, built like a tank, and a fraction of the cost of a Zojirushi.
We’ve had an 8 quart model that gets used more than once a day on average, and we paid under $100 Canadian back in 20217. Never had a problem with making rice in it.
This is a silly but …
I had planned on using the instant pot as a rice cooker, but 90% of the time I want rice, it is to go with the thing cooking in the instant pot , so I end up making rice on the stove.
Had nothing but problems making rice in my instant pot. Either it’s too hard, or too soft.
Tried different salt amounts, different water ratios, rinsing, draining, using the rice mode, using the manual mode.
Never had perfect rice from it.
That’s because the rice setting is a bit of a sham. The rice mode just sets a timer for the rice to cook, assuming you are just using cheap, commodity-level white rice, but any other type of rice, you have to adjust. You can make good rice in an instant pot, it just takes more work. You need to know the right amount of time and pressure for that specific type of rice.
Rice cookers have one or more sensors that detect when the rice is done (e.g., when the pot gets hotter than the boiling temp of water, so it knows all the water is absorbed). That makes purpose built rice cookers more foolproof.
Instant Pots aren’t a fad anymore, either, so you can probably pick one up used cheap or on a buy nothing group.
I don’t use my instant pot for rice because a saucepan is simpler and easier to clean, but I’m happy with it and I’m sure it would work just fine for rice.
I use mine for rice but it also gets used as a slow cooker and steamer (also, soft boiled eggs are super easy) when necessary
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Usually rice cookers are used in Asian countries on daily basis, it’s like one of few things that won’t ever break, even the cheapest
doesn’t easily get nasty AF
Background? What the hell are you doing with your rice cooker?!
I have a Japanese zojirushi I bought about 8 years ago. Fuzzy logic, induction, etc. Still going strong and I don’t find it hard to clean. Every one I used (such as my first year in Japan at a sharehouse) worked well and lasted.
I’ve been reall happy with the Sage/Breville brand. I have both a blender and a pressure cooker/rice cooker from them and they are really well build. Sturdy and super easy to clean and use.
I’m confused by all the issues people have had cleaning it. All of the ones I’ve used have a non stick inner pot thing. The rice just dumps out of there with minimal effort. Are there really cheap brands that don’t have this or am I missing something about cleaning it?
The non-stick interior isn’t my biggest complaint, it’s all the groves around the seals gaskets that icky with rice water.
I find that, to clean it, I need to wrap a paper towel around a sharp chopstick or toothpick to get in to all the little corners. And when I look at all of my friend’s rice cookers, they have the same problem. Rice water crustys all around the seals that are hard to hit with a disk sponge.
Edit: mine is pretty clean right now, but I just spent a good amount to time getting into all the little crevices. Of all then stuff in my kitchen, its one of the more annoying things to clean.
Your lid looks completely fixed? On my zojirushi the top panel pops out and you can scrub it down, then just wipe out the lid before you pop it back in.
Yeah, that’s easy to pop out and clean. The most annoying part is the black plastic channel with the latch and hinge. They collect rice water and have lots of small spaces that you can’t easily hit with a sponge. You need a chopstick or toothpick.
It’s all the other parts that might get dirty. Mine has a tendency to form bubbles, which means starchy foam can get around this metal disk above the pot and starches everything. I have to disassemble everything to get it really clean again.
