The rice cookers I examined fell into three unfastened classes: small, inexpensive 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 provided 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 price range choose) and the Zojirushi rice makers carried out practically identically, making good 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’d gleefully advocate 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 remaining nod.
The less complicated Oster and Zojirushi rice makers carried out practically identically in our testing.
The $50 8-cup Hamilton Seashore rice cooker (At the moment Out of Inventory) looks as if an excellent deal for the dimensions, however its rice was inconsistent, with severely undercooked, dry rice sections. Zojirushi’s 3-cup choice additionally disillusioned 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 important cleanup.
When it got here to the midrange multicookers, I discovered the cooking time to be sluggish and the outcomes have been persistently a bit off. An 8-cup Aroma rice cooker and meals steamer, On the spot 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 may maintain loads of rice and produced first rate batches of white and brown, cooking rice took longer than another machine to take action at nicely over an hour and a half for brown rice.
If you end up cooking a great deal of several types of grains, considered one of these could also be a viable choice since they’ve so many area of interest settings. For rice, there are higher choices accessible. You may also discover you get extra worth with a real multicooker that features a strain cooker operate. I might direct you to CNET’s checklist of greatest On the spot Pots for 2024 for a bit extra on that.
In some way 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 gadgets are fastidiously calibrated; Zojirushi even provides a bit little bit of personalization as to the way you need your white rice cooked, which is good if you happen to’ve received people with totally different rice texture preferences dwelling beneath the identical roof.
The Tiger is lower than half the value of its counterpart and cooked rice extraordinarily nicely; quicker than any others. It could not have all of the bells and whistles of the Zojirushi, which nabs our high choose for customized rice, nevertheless it’s our high general selection for 2024.
