The rice cookers I examined fell into three free classes: small, inexpensive gadgets, midrange multicookers and specialised, high-end rice cookers.
Every mini rice cooker I examined, together with the Imusa 3-cup, the Dash mini 2-cup rice cooker, and the Black & Decker 3-cup rice cooker provided first rate, small servings of white rice, though the Sprint took a painfully lengthy 35 minutes simply to prepare dinner simply 1 cup of white. All of them struggled with brown rice and blended rice.
The marginally bigger 6-cup Oster (our funds decide) and the Zojirushi rice makers carried out practically identically, making good pots of white rice in 19 and 20 minutes respectively and superb brown rice — albeit maybe simply barely underdone — in a lightning-fast 22 minutes. I might gleefully suggest both one as a stable space-saving rice cooker choice. Whereas the Zojirushi does appear barely extra solidly constructed, it is greater than double the value of the Oster, which provides the Oster our ultimate nod.
The less complicated Oster and Zojirushi rice makers carried out practically identically in our testing.
The $50 8-cup Hamilton Beach rice cooker (At present Out of Inventory) looks like deal for the dimensions, however its rice was inconsistent, with severely undercooked, dry rice sections. Zojirushi’s 3-cup option additionally disenchanted with rice that was too moist and barely damaged down, dropping the excellence of well-cooked white rice.
Cuisinart’s 4-cup and Black and Decker’s 7-cup rice cookers had been a few of our least favorites as a result of they had been each so messy. Cuisinart’s boiled every time I used this standard rice cooker and Black and Decker’s bigger mannequin leaked onto the counter, necessitating vital cleanup.
When it got here to the midrange multicookers, I discovered the cooking time to be sluggish and the outcomes had been persistently just a little off. An 8-cup Aroma rice cooker and food steamer, Instant Pot’s Zest cooker and a 5-cup Panasonic obtained us excited with the assorted capabilities obtainable on their interfaces, however all three produced overcooked, barely mushy rice, probably because of the sluggish cooking. I additionally examined Cusinart’s bigger Rice Plus Multi-Cooker and whereas it may possibly maintain loads of rice and produced first rate batches of white and brown, cooking rice took longer than another machine to take action at properly over an hour and a half for brown rice.
If you end up cooking a great deal of several types of grains, one in every of these could also be a viable choice since they’ve so many area of interest settings. For rice, there are higher choices obtainable. You may also discover you get extra worth with a real multicooker that features a stress cooker perform. I would direct you to CNET’s checklist of best Instant Pots for 2024 for a bit extra on that.
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Lastly, the higher-end, specialised rice cookers from Tiger and Zojirushi had been each spectacular, as famous above. It is clear these gadgets are fastidiously calibrated; Zojirushi even gives just a little little bit of personalization as to the way you need your white rice cooked, which is good in the event you’ve obtained people with totally different rice texture preferences residing underneath the identical roof.
The Tiger is lower than half the value of its counterpart and cooked rice extraordinarily properly; sooner than any others. It could not have all of the bells and whistles of the Zojirushi, which nabs our prime decide for customized rice, however it’s our prime total selection for 2024.
