The rice cookers I examined fell into three free classes: small, inexpensive 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 cook dinner simply 1 cup of white. All of them struggled with brown rice and blended rice, although.
The marginally bigger 6-cup Oster (our funds decide) and the Zojirushi rice makers carried out practically identically, making excellent 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 suggest both one as a strong space-saving rice cooker choice. Whereas the Zojirushi does appear barely extra solidly constructed, it is greater than double the value of the Oster, which supplies the Oster our ultimate nod.
The easier Oster and Zojirushi rice makers carried out practically identically in our testing.
The $50 8-cup Hamilton Seashore rice cooker looks like a superb deal for the dimensions, however its rice was inconsistent, with severely undercooked, dry rice sections. Zojirushi’s 3-cup choice additionally dissatisfied with rice that was too moist and barely damaged down, dropping 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 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 have been constantly a little bit off. An 8-cup Aroma rice cooker and meals steamer, On the spot Pot’s Zest cooker and a 5-cup Panasonic bought us excited with the assorted features obtainable 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 possibly maintain quite a lot of rice and produced first rate batches of white and brown, cooking rice took longer than every other machine to take action at nicely over an hour and a half for brown rice.
If you end up cooking a great deal of various kinds of grains, one among these could also be a viable choice since they’ve so many area of interest settings. However for rice, there are higher choices obtainable. You may also discover you get extra bang in your buck with a real multicooker that features a strain cooker perform. I would direct you to CNET’s listing of finest On the spot 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 provides a little bit little bit of personalization as to the way you need your white rice cooked, which is right for those who’ve bought people with completely different rice texture preferences dwelling below the identical roof.
The Tiger, nevertheless, is lower than half the value of its counterpart and cooked rice extraordinarily nicely sooner than any others. It might not have all of the bells and whistles of the Zojirushi, which nabs our high decide for customized rice, but it surely’s our high total alternative for the perfect rice cooker in 2024.
