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 supplied 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 finances choose) and the Zojirushi rice makers carried out almost identically, making good pots of white rice in 19 and 20 minutes respectively and excellent 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 value of the Oster, which provides the Oster our ultimate nod.
The easier Oster and Zojirushi rice makers carried out almost identically in our testing.
The $50 8-cup Hamilton Seashore rice cooker (Replace: Out of Inventory) looks as if a very good deal for the dimensions, however its rice was inconsistent, with severely undercooked, dry rice sections. Zojirushi’s 3-cup possibility additionally upset 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 have been a few of our least favorites as a result of they have 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 have been constantly a bit of off. An 8-cup Aroma rice cooker and meals steamer, Instantaneous Pot’s Zest cooker and a 5-cup Panasonic received us excited with the varied features accessible on their interfaces, however all three produced overcooked, barely mushy rice, presumably as a result of sluggish cooking. I additionally examined Cusinart’s bigger Rice Plus Multi-Cooker and whereas it could maintain numerous rice and produced first rate batches of white and brown, cooking rice took longer than another machine to take action at effectively over an hour and a half for brown rice.
If you end up cooking a great deal of various kinds of grains, considered one of these could also be a viable possibility since they’ve so many area of interest settings. For rice, there are higher choices accessible. You may additionally discover you get extra worth with a real multicooker that features a stress cooker perform. I might direct you to CNET’s listing of finest Instantaneous Pots for 2024 for a bit extra on that.
One way or the other I did not blow a fuse.
Lastly, the higher-end, specialised rice cookers from Tiger and Zojirushi have been each spectacular, as famous above. It is clear these units are rigorously calibrated; Zojirushi even affords a bit of little bit of personalization as to the way you need your white rice cooked, which is good in the event you’ve received of us with completely different rice texture preferences residing beneath the identical roof.
The Tiger is lower than half the value of its counterpart and cooked rice extraordinarily effectively; sooner than any others. It might not have all of the bells and whistles of the Zojirushi, which nabs our prime choose for customized rice, but it surely’s our prime general selection for 2024.
