The rice cookers I examined fell into three free classes: small, reasonably priced gadgets, 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 respectable, 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, although.
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 choice. Whereas the Zojirushi does appear barely extra solidly constructed, it is greater than double the worth of the Oster, which provides the Oster our closing nod.
The less complicated Oster and Zojirushi rice makers carried out almost identically in our testing.
The $50 8-cup Hamilton Seashore rice cooker looks like a very good deal for the dimensions, however its rice was inconsistent, with severely undercooked, dry rice sections. Zojirushi’s 3-cup choice 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 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 sluggish and the outcomes had been persistently somewhat off. An 8-cup Aroma rice cooker and meals steamer, Immediate Pot’s Zest cooker and a 5-cup Panasonic acquired us excited with the varied features accessible 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 might probably maintain loads of rice and produced respectable 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, one in every of these could also be a viable choice since they’ve so many area of interest settings. However for rice, there are higher choices accessible. You may also discover you get extra bang on your buck with a real multicooker that features a stress cooker perform. I would direct you to CNET’s listing of finest Immediate 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 had been each spectacular, as famous above. It is clear these gadgets are rigorously calibrated; Zojirushi even gives somewhat little bit of personalization as to the way you need your white rice cooked, which is good when you’ve acquired people with completely different rice texture preferences dwelling below the identical roof.
The Tiger, nonetheless, is lower than half the worth of its counterpart and cooked rice extraordinarily effectively quicker than any others. It might not have all of the bells and whistles of the Zojirushi, which nabs our high choose for customized rice, but it surely’s our high total selection for one of the best rice cooker in 2024.
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