Rice Cookers- Are they worth it?

Thinking about purchasing a rice cooker. Is it worth the money? Anybody have some opinions on them and what brand I should look at getting. Right now im eyeing a Zorirushi but not sure if I want to spend 100+.

Thanks guys.

Depends. How often do you cook rice? What value do you place on convenience? For us the answer is a clear YES. We have the Zojirushi and it works like a champ. If you are using short grain rice you can soak it in the cooker and turn it on later. Never boils over and keeps the rice warm while you finish the rest of the meal. We will replace this one if it ever fails. Haven't tried it, but you can supposedly cook things like oatmeal in it as well.

When my Japanese wife moved in with me, this was the #1 household essential for her!
We do use it an awful lot because our young son packs away the rice.

I had one, but did't cook enough rice to warrant it taking up counter/cabinet space. Instead, I have a stovetop rice cooker/steamer. This is pretty much exactly what I have.

https://www.amazon.com/Heuck-H30075-Cooker-Steamer-5-5-Quart/dp/B008RF88KE

Its also commonly called the Charleston Rice Pot.

They are not cheap but they are totally worth it if you cook rice relatively frequently. And as strop alluded to you can also cook things like oatmeal -- you toss in some McCann's steal cut oats the night before and wake up to perfectly cooked oatmeal. My wife is Malaysian Chinese and we cook rice at least 2-3 times per week so for us it was worth it. They cook rice significantly better than you could ever cook yourself on the stove-top.

If you make rice often it's definitely worth having. My girlfriends family makes rice every day and has a really expensive one but I can't tell the difference between their's and mine. I have the aroma 4-cup, which is $29 on amazon. I've had it for 3 years and it works great. It has options for white or brown rice and also a steam function that I use for veggies. It's the #1 seller on amazon and is going to be the best for your money. They also have an 8-cup if you want something larger but the minimum you can make in that one is 2-cups and is a lot of rice for just a few people.

^ we have something very similar if not the same thing. We don't cook rice often, but when we do it's works like a charm.

Yes , they are worth the money..

We've had large ones and small ones. We finally gave up on them and cook rice in a pan. It isn't difficult to get satisfactory results.

strop said:

. We have the Zojirushi and it works like a champ.

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I cook a lot of quinoa, brown and wild rice. Can Zojirushi handle grains other than rice? What model do you have?

ShaverGN said:

I cook a lot of quinoa, brown and wild rice. Can Zojirushi handle grains other than rice?

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We like to cook what we call the "house blend" -- white, brown, quinoa, and sometimes Italian red rice.
We use the same setting and amount of water as with pure white, and it comes out fine.

I eat rice about once, maybe twice a week. Being single my opinion may be different than others, but I get along just fine with a nifty little microwave unit I found at Walmart for five bucks. It's big enough to do many cups worth of rice though for families.

Rice cookies are always worth it!

Not really. I use thai jasmine rice. Two cups of water, One cup of rice in a teflon pot. Boil the water, turn it down, add rice, cap it off and set it for 20 minutes. Doesn't require a special $100 cooker to do this.

Totally love my zojirushi, and I've been using it for over 20 years. I used to live in Japan, so we eat a lot of rice in my house. I'm probably cooking rice at least 1-2 times per week. I love, love, love my rice cooker. You can have when you pry it from my cold, dead hands, as they say.

I have an Aroma and I use it a lot. Instead of boiling eggs you can steam them for 13 minutes and they come out perfect and easy to shell. We also steam a lot of veggies In it. It also does a great job on the rice.

We bought a $20 cooker at the PX since the fancy ones only come in 110Volt and we only have 220V in the house.
I refuse to buy and pay for using a transformer.
We've only used it a couple of times but when we made some packaged spanish rice the rice came out much better than when we followed the stove top directions. Our first experiments were with Uncle Ben's Rice and were nothing great.
If I can find Jasmine rice in a bag smaller than 5 pounds, we'll try that.
Not a bad investment and I never had much success with the microwave cookers.

Blary:
Another vote for...'Well worth it'!

Rice is the best, the most nutritive and unquestionably the most widespread staple in the world". [FONT=&quot]Chef Auguste Escoffier [/FONT]

We have an Aroma cooker that we've had for a very long time. It replaced the one that I got about 25 years ago. It's as simple as it can get--add the rice and water in the proper ratio, and then press the lever down. Fifteen minutes after the lever pops up, you have perfect rice. No need to count the fifteen minutes, mind you, as it holds the rice perfectly for a couple of hours. Just start the rice and go on about whatever else it is you're doing. When you come back, you have rice.

It works for quinoa, too, but it's better to turn it off (or unplug it) when the lever pops up. Not really a big deal.

I like the simple sort. Making rice on the stove is simple, but you have to time it, and it takes up a burner. This one doesn't need tending or a burner. I don't remember what we paid for it, as it's been so long. However, the ones that look a lot like the one we have cost around $25.

CurtisB81 said:

Yes , they are worth the money..

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+1 ... but with a few caveats.

A recent cooking show rated the Aroma / 8-cup / $30 rice cooker ... it beat out others that cost 5 times as much.

I have a Sanyo that is about 8 years old now, I think it was $100 back then. Does 5.5 cup fully loaded, but I usually just make half-a-cup of rice for myself.

I love this Sanyo because it is micro-processor controlled and has that Micom Fuzzy Logic stuff. It has a built in clock, not just a timer but a CLOCK, so I can program my meals to be ready each day at 6pm or 8:30pm or whevenver I have a recurring schedule. I've looked and looked, and I can't find any other rice cooker in this price range that has a CLOCK, not a timer.