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 cook dinner simply 1 cup of white. All of them struggled with brown rice and combined rice.
The marginally bigger 6-cup Oster (our price range 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’d 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 worth of the Oster, which supplies the Oster our ultimate nod.
The less complicated Oster and Zojirushi rice makers carried out almost identically in our testing.
The $50 8-cup Hamilton Seaside rice cooker (Presently Out of Inventory) looks as if 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, 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 persistently just a little off. An 8-cup Aroma rice cooker and meals steamer, Prompt Pot’s Zest cooker and a 5-cup Panasonic acquired us excited with the assorted features out there on their interfaces, however all three produced overcooked, barely mushy rice, probably as a result of sluggish cooking. I additionally examined Cusinart’s bigger Rice Plus Multi-Cooker and whereas it could actually maintain plenty of rice and produced first rate batches of white and brown, cooking rice took longer than another machine to take action at properly over an hour and a half for brown rice.
If you end up cooking a great deal of several types of grains, certainly one of these could also be a viable choice since they’ve so many area of interest settings. For rice, there are higher choices out there. You may also discover you get extra worth with a real multicooker that features a strain cooker perform. I would direct you to CNET’s listing of finest Prompt Pots for 2024 for a bit extra on that.
Someway 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 rigorously calibrated; Zojirushi even presents just a little little bit of personalization as to the way you need your white rice cooked, which is right in the event you’ve acquired of us with totally different rice texture preferences dwelling beneath the identical roof.
The Tiger is lower than half the worth of its counterpart and cooked rice extraordinarily properly; quicker 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 alternative for 2024.