A rice cooker sounds like a superfluous kitchen gadget, a luxury that you can do without. If you eat rice regularly however, it’s well worth splashing out on. The best rice cookers can produce high quality rice much more consistently, time after time, than most people ever could with a mere saucepan. Plus, a rice cooker will work completely unattended, without requiring monitoring, stirring, straining or any other intervention from you, freeing you up to concentrate on cooking the rest of your meal – or even just sit back and relax.
The best rice cookers: Everything you need to know
Electric rice cookers for the home kitchen can vary dramatically in price, with the models we’ve tested starting at just over £20 and peaking as high as £270, with midrange models costing around £100. The reason for this huge variance in price is due to the differences in the way cheap rice cookers work compared to costlier models.
All electric home rice cookers consist of a removable bowl (usually ceramic or metal) that fits inside a pot. At the bottom of the pot is a heating element. Once the bowl is filled with water and rice and you’ve started the cooking process, the heating element boils the water.
Some cheap rice cookers will turn off the heating element once boiling point has been reached and maintained for a set period; others will cease boiling once the weight of the bowl’s contents has decreased past a certain point due to the rice absorbing some water with the rest boiled away as excess steam. At this point, your rice should be ready to eat.
The majority of midrange and high-end rice cookers take a more sophisticated approach. Most models costing around £100 or more are equipped with processors, commonly marketed as ‘fuzzy-logic’ or ‘AI’ chips, and sensors. They can automatically adjust the cooking time, the temperature and the rate of temperature increase similar to the way you would do so manually using a saucepan and the temperature controls on your hob.
In the case of all rice cookers, there should be no guesswork or trial and error involved as to how much water you need. All electric rice cookers come with a rice measuring scoop. These vary in size, but usually hold around 140g of rice on average which is usually enough rice for one person. There are measuring notches on the inside of the bowl marked with the number of rice scoops - 2, 4, 6, 8 and so on. If you’re only cooking two scoops of rice, then you only fill the bowl with water up to the 2 point and so forth. Some rice cookers require more or less water than usual to cook some varieties of rice - the amount of water needed for these will be marked in the manual for that cooker.
Most cheap rice cookers can only cook long grain rice and even then only to a basic standard of quality. Basmati, the curry house staple we’re all familiar with, is a long grain rice. Pricier rice cookers can handle other types - notably short grain rice, the type used in risotto as well as Thai and Japanese dishes, and more exotic rice-based dishes using presets chosen from a control panel on the front of the rice cooker.
One feature that every rice cooker has, since everyone will use it, is the Keep Warm feature. It’s self-explanatory - once your rice has finished cooking, the rice cooker will keep it warm for you so you can top up your plate with warm rice as your meal progresses.
Convinced that you need a rice cooker? Then pick one of our best buys below...
The best rice cookers: The ones to buy
1. ZOJIRUSHI NS-TSQ10
Price when reviewed: £194
We’d love to break conventional wisdom by telling you that the best home rice cookers are also the cheapest, but that simply isn’t the case. The Zojirushi NS-TSQ10 is pricey, but there’s no doubting its value. It cooks both short and long grain to a very high quality, consistently and reliably. It’s easy to use, easy to clean and its Keep Warm mode works so well that you can effectively have rice on tap whenever you need it.
Buy the Zojirushi NS-TSQ10 from Yum Asia for £194
2. ZOJIRUSHI NS-YSQ10
Price when reviewed: £269
Although the Zojirushi NS-YSQ10 isn’t dramatically more expensive than its cheaper stablemate, the NS-TSQ10, it is pricey enough to give us pause. There’s no doubting its build quality, good looks or ease of use though. Plus, the quality of its cooked rice, especially its short grain rice, is excellent. This is a kitchen tool that turns out restaurant-quality rice time after time. Even so, while its short grain rice cooking is superior to that of the NS-TSQ10, you’d have to eat short grain rice very regularly to justify the extra outlay. If you want the best, and are willing to pay for it, then the Zojirushi NS-YSQ10 is for you. Otherwise, go for its cheaper sibling.
Buy the Zojirushi NS-YSQ10 from Yum Asia for £279
3. SAGE BY HESTON BLUMENTHAL Risotto Plus
Price when reviewed: £89
This multi-purpose home rice cooker isn’t the flawless five-star appliance that you might think it is from its celebrity chef branding and endorsement. Even so, it’s reasonably inexpensive, looks good, is easy to use and cooks long grain rice to a good standard in very little time. It even comes with a handy, well-designed steamer so you can cook your vegetables along with your rice at the same time. You have to jump through some hoops to cook good-quality short grain rice though and the mess it generates while doing so will require extra clean up. Even then, it’s not up to the standard of admittedly more expensive rice cookers. Still, it’s a good alternative if your budget can’t stretch to accommodate either of the Zojirushi models.