The rice cookers I examined fell into three free classes: small, reasonably priced units, midrange multicookers and specialised, high-end rice cookers.
Every mini rice cooker I examined, together with the Imusa 3-cup, the Sprint 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 cook dinner simply 1 cup of white. All of them struggled with brown rice and combined rice.
The marginally bigger 6-cup Oster (our price range 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 advocate both one as a stable space-saving rice cooker possibility. Whereas the Zojirushi does appear barely extra solidly constructed, it is greater than double the worth 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 Seashore rice cooker (At present Out of Inventory) looks as if deal for the dimensions, however its rice was inconsistent, with severely undercooked, dry rice sections. Zojirushi’s 3-cup possibility additionally dissatisfied with rice that was too moist and barely damaged down, shedding 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 typical 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 gradual and the outcomes had been constantly a bit of off. An 8-cup Aroma rice cooker and meals steamer, Prompt Pot’s Zest cooker and a 5-cup Panasonic bought us excited with the varied features obtainable on their interfaces, however all three produced overcooked, barely mushy rice, presumably because of the gradual cooking. I additionally examined Cusinart’s bigger Rice Plus Multi-Cooker and whereas it may well maintain lots of rice and produced first rate batches of white and brown, cooking rice took longer than every other 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 possibility 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 listing of finest Prompt Pots for 2024 for a bit extra on that.
In some way I did not blow a fuse.
Lastly, the higher-end, specialised rice cookers from Tiger and Zojirushi had been each spectacular, as famous above. It is clear these units are fastidiously calibrated; Zojirushi even presents a bit of little bit of personalization as to the way you need your white rice cooked, which is right in case you’ve bought of us with completely different rice texture preferences dwelling underneath the identical roof.
The Tiger is lower than half the worth 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, but it surely’s our prime general selection for 2024.
