As I mentioned in an earlier post, the small kitchen appliance that we use the most is the rice cooker. We bought our simple on-off device 17 years ago for $50. It’s served us long and well. I’d say that paying $3 a year for an appliance that’s used 3 times a week was a good investment. Unfortunately, the inner bowl’s coating was wearing off. The search for a new rice cooker began.
A search of rice cookers on amazon.com produced over 1000 results. I just looked at the first page. Our old trusty cooker was featured, along with more sophisticated models. More recent rice-cooking technologies included pressure cooking and the multi-cooker. Neither of us has much use for pressure cooking or slow-cooking, so those machines were ruled out. I even saw one cooker that promises the coveted Persian tahdig crusty-bottomed rice. We’d get that from time to time with our old cooker without a dedicated machine.
Julian (obsessive-compulsive recovering physicist that he is) then did research. He consulted Cooks Illustrated and the New York Times’s Wirecutter series. Last week he announced his decision: A Zojirushi model with the neuro-fuzzy logic feature, which received high ratings from both sources. I went along, even though it was three times the cost of our original model. [There’s a strategy to this: If he makes the decision, he can’t blame me if the product’s a lemon.] It’s also a bit larger than our old one, which could come in handy whenever we’re able to have guests over again for dinner.
The box arrived on Thursday. The first test came the following night when I got takeout from a local Chinese restaurant. (This restaurant, like many others in the area, charges extra for rice.) He followed the rice-rinsing recommendations to the letter, then added the appropriate amount of water. He pressed the on button, then we settled on what to order. The rice was done by the time I got back from picking up the food. We noticed that the rice was a bit softer than what we’d get from the old cooker. We should have turned off the keep warm function, because the rice dregs took on the appearance of tahdig. It worked well otherwise. Tonight’s test will be when he makes feijoada.
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