Steamers and Rice Cookers
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Here you will find suppliers of all types of rice steamers and rice cookers. With a variety of choices and manufacturers, rice steamers and rice cookers can make cooking rice clean, easy and hassle free.
Cooking rice with rice steamers
You should consider buying rice steamers if you want to have restaurant quality rice for your Chinese or Japanese dishes. Contrary to popular belief, rice steamers do not just cook rice – they can be used to make soup, steam vegetables and cook congee.
When you are shopping for steamers and rice cookers, make sure it has a timer as well as several settings. This way you can prepare the rice and have it ready when you get home from work.
Steamers and rice cookers that cook up to 4 cups are more suited to families with up to 4 members. If you have a large family you will most likely need a rice steamer that can cook up to 10 cups of rice. A good general indicator is that one cup of rice will serve 3 – 4 people.
There are many rice steamers and rice cookers around, but a good rice steamer will cost you about $60 but you will get years of use out of it. This is well worth the money if you have rice with your food for more than once a week – considering that they are easier to cook and clean than making your rice in a saucepan.
The major advantage a rice cooker has over “conventional” method of cooking rice is that with rice steamers, you do not have to watch over it whilst the rice cooks, adjust the heat and turn the stove off in time to make sure the saucepan does not boil over or burn.
Cooking rice in rice cookers is very simple. All you need to do is put the rice in the cooking bowl provided, place the appropriate amount of water (about one cup of water for each cup of rice) in the rice cooker and press the cook button! In about 15 to 30 minutes, you will have restaurant quality rice.
If you want to have “stickier” rice, then you should place more water for each cup of rice that you have. If you want “harder” rice (for fried rice etc) then you should have a bit less water per cup of rice.
Popular Rice cookers and rice steamers
Panasonic SR-G06FG
This is the perfect rice cooker for a young couple or a small family that does not have too much rice with their meals. The problem with buying a larger rice cooker when you don’t eat too much rice with your meals is that the rice sometimes goes crusty at the edges and the bottom. A smaller rice cooker could prevents this problem.
Because it is smaller than most of the rice steamer models currently available, Amazon reviews say that it can't compete on the same playing field as more advanced rice cookers in terms of additional functions (perhaps it is just that the Panasonic is not visually impressive enough). But this is not the selling point of this particular rice cooker – as this rice steamer is designed primarily as a no-frills device that cooks rice.
Since it is aimed at the lower end of the market, this rice cooker cooks rice quicker than most other bigger models and can be hidden away without too much hassle.
The down side to the Panasonic is that the lid rattles as the rice is cooking which may annoy some people. Because the water bubbles as the lid rattles, water can spit out from the rice cooker causing a bit of a mess – especially when you are cooking large batches of rice.
But the deal killer for me is that there is no “keep warm” setting, which means that if I am way out with my cooking schedule (ie: I have to wait 30 minutes for my roast to finish) then the rice can turn crusty.
Sanyo Micom ECJ-D55S
According to reviews on Amazon, this is the best overall rice cooker because it is cheaper and looks stylish. Functionality wise, it has a countdown clock so you can plan your cooking priorities (I find that very useful indeed). The most impressive thing about the Sanyo is the steamer basket allowing you to steam vegetables and other food whilst the rice is being cooked.
Comparing with the Zoijrushi models, the Sanyo has the same cooking capacity as well as being programmable for cooking different types of rice. However, the Sanyo takes longer to cook the rice – this should not matter too much if you effectively plan your cooking with the countdown timer though!
Considering the wide price range in rice cookers, how often you eat rice is a good gauge of how much you should spend on a rice cooker.
We tested several models, from a $30 Oster to a $260 Zojirushi. Each comes with its own measuring cup (slightly smaller than a standard cup), which should be used for the best results. That's because it often corresponds with the water lines marked in the pot. You put two cups of dry rice into the pot, for example, then pour in enough water to the "2" line. The cooking pots are removable and nonstick, so cleanup is a cinch.
At its simplest, a rice cooker works via a thermostat. Inside the center of the heating plate is a small thermal sensing device on a spring. When rice and water are placed in the cooking pot, which goes into the rice cooker, the weight of the pot depresses the thermal sensor.
Switch on the rice cooker and an electric coil warms up the heating plate and brings the water to a boil. Once the rice has absorbed all the water, the temperature will begin to rise past 212 degrees (the boiling point of water). When the thermal sensor senses this, the system turns off the heat and switches to the "keep warm" cycle.
In more advanced models that have computer chips, the rice cooker, instead of simply reacting to the temperature, regulates it depending on what program is selected. And cookers that use fuzzy logic do what a real cook does, adjusting the heat throughout the cooking as it takes into account the volume of rice (which it senses by the weight of the pot) and the type of rice (which the cook has indicated in the setting).
Zojirushi rice cookers, in my humble opinion, are the BMW of rice cookers. We will take a look at their two most popular models – the NHS-10 and the NS-ZCC10. Zojirushi rice cookers are all fitted with microchips that tell them to cook the rice with fuzzy logic. Apparently fuzzy logic is a technology that is designed to mimic (intelligent?) human actions. So rather than using an induction heating system to cook the rice, the Zojirushi rice cookers use a direct heating system, and the microchips detects the cooking time based on settings you've chosen and regulate temperature accordingly.
The cookers also have 24-hour programmable preset timers; five different rice settings (so that you can pre-set it to cook sushi rice or fried rice etc), including one for brown rice; an LCD clock; and a melody chime at the start and end of a cooking cycle. Both incorporate precooking and "sitting" time in the cooking cycle, so making white rice takes about 45 minutes. (A quick-cook feature cuts the time by nearly half, but the rice won't be as tender.) The brown rice took about 1 hour and 20 minutes.
ZOJirushi Rice Cooker/Steamer NHS-10 (6 cup capacity) with KEEP WARM
If you are after a mega rice cooker/steamer, then the Zojirushi rice cooker is something that you should consider seriously. The Zojirushi NHS-18 is a ten cup cooker that has plenty of functionalities but yet it does not cost the earth. According to most reviewers on Amazon, the best rice comes out of this cooker when you wash the rice before cooking it (this is recommended practice amongst most Asian cooks). Operating the Zojirushi is easy as there is only one button on it so you really cannot go wrong with it. There are no complicated operating procedures which suits even the most basic of cooks.
However the trade off is that you cannot set the cooker up to cook different rice for different cuisines. For example, you cannot set the cooker to cook you sushi rice or rice for fried rice.
Zojirushi Neuro Fuzzy NS-ZCC10
The Zojirushi Neuro Fuzzy NS-ZCC10 is chosen more often by reviewers as the best high-end full-featured rice cooker than any other model. This programmable rice cooker can store texture preferences and handle specialized rice types, including basmati and sushi rice. It makes tender rice, according to experts, but it takes longer to cook than basic rice cookers. For those who want to prepare mainly plain white rice, this model, with its wide variety of features, is probably overkill. If you're looking for a good computerized rice cooker with about the same 5.5-cup capacity, reviewers recommend the Sanyo Micom ECJ-D55S (*est. $105).