If you eat a lot of rice or you&#;re just tired of making it on the stovetop, then a good rice cooker can make better-quality rice than you can on the stove, all while you&#;re busy cooking other elements of your meal. It can turn out perfectly cooked rice and porridges of any type &#; all you need to do is measure accurately. But with different brands and technologies, it can be hard to know which rice cookers are worth your hard-earned money.
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To find the best rice cooker for you and your kitchen, we spent weeks testing 18 different rice cookers from popular brands such as Zojirushi, Tiger, Cuckoo and more. After dozens of test cooks and eating way too much rice (a phrase we never thought we&#;d write), two rice cookers stood out among the rest.
Best budget rice cooker
The Cuckoo CR-F Rice Cooker made rice that was delicious and a big upgrade from stovetop rice, though not on the same level as the Neuro Fuzzy. It also has similar features such as Quick Cook and Keep Warm. Plus it costs considerably less than the Zojirushi, making it the perfect rice cooker for people who want to spend less.
Shop at Amazon
$80 at Cuckoo America
Kai Burkhardt/CNN
The Zojirushi Neuro Fuzzy Rice Cooker was the clear winner in our testing. Whether we cooked sushi rice, brown rice or basmati rice, the rice came out fluffy and delicious every single time. It was the highest-quality cook we got out of all the rice cookers we tested, tied with the Tiger JKT-D10U, which cooked similarly delicious rice but costs about $60 more.
The rice from the Zojirushi Neuro Fuzzy was top-notch, and the machine has plenty of features that make cooking rice an easy and pleasant experience. The Zojirushi&#;s microprocessor (&#;Micom&#; for &#;microcomputer&#; in the company&#;s nomenclature) uses software (&#;fuzzy logic&#;) to determine how much water and rice is in the cooker so it makes the perfect pot every time &#; even if you aren&#;t perfect in your measurements.
That means if you ditch your measuring cup and accidentally add too much or too little water to your rice, the Zojirushi will make up for your mistake and adjust its cooking process to produce delicious rice. We tested this ourselves by adding an extra cup of water in one cook and a cup fewer in another. This would normally result in a completely ruined batch of rice, but with the Neuro Fuzzy it was still edible and actually not that bad.
From left to right: 2 cups of rice with 1 cup of water, 2 cups of rice with 2 cups of water, 2 cups of rice with 3 cups of water.
Kai Burkhardt/CNNIt&#;s easy to cook rice in the Zojirushi, and thankfully it&#;s a breeze to clean as well. Most cookers we tested had between two and three detachable parts that can easily be hand-washed. The Neuro Fuzzy has two elements &#; the inner pan and the inner lid &#; that can be removed and washed in mere minutes (like most pots in rice cookers, it can&#;t be thrown in the dishwasher).
The Zojirushi is all about ease of use, whether that&#;s in the form of its forgiving software, easy-to-clean elements or the Neuro Fuzzy&#;s useful &#;Keep Warm&#; and &#;Extended Keep Warm&#; features. These automatically turn on after cooking and will store your rice at the perfect temperature (about 140 degrees Fahrenheit, warm enough to inhibit bacterial growth that can cause food poisoning) so you can scoop up leftover rice to eat hours after its finished cooking. The normal Keep Warm will last for 12 hours, after which the Extended Keep Warm will activate for an additional eight hours.
The Zojirushi also has a &#;Quick Cook&#; function, which brought its normal cook time for sushi rice from 42 minutes down to 31 minutes. The quality of the rice isn&#;t as good as the full 42-minute cycle, but it&#;s still much better than any stovetop rice we&#;ve eaten.
Features like the Quick Cook and Keep Warm settings are featured in many of the other rice cookers we tested (including our other winner), so while they&#;re nice to have, they aren&#;t what pushed the Zojirushi over the top. Our selections really came down to the quality of rice, and in that area, the Zojirushi just couldn&#;t be beat. So if you want a rice cooker that&#;s simple to use but most importantly makes an amazing pot of rice every single time, the Zojirushi Neuro Fuzzy is the one for you. If you want to learn more about our favorite rice cooker, check out our full, in-depth review.
Kai Burkhardt/CNN
The Cuckoo CR-F Rice Cooker made rice that was delicious and of a similar quality as other rice cookers we tested that were double its price, though not at the same level as the Zojirushi Neuro Fuzzy or Tiger JKT-D10U. If you don&#;t need the best of the best, this Cuckoo rice cooker provides the perfect balance of price, ease of use and quality rice.
In our rice tests, the Cuckoo CR-F made far better rice than the budget options and other mid-tier cookers we tested. Its closest competitors were the Tiger JAX-T10U-K and the Hamilton Beach Digital Programmable Rice Cooker. The Tiger and the CR-F had similar performances, especially in the rice tests, but the Tiger JAX-T10U-K costs more than twice as much. On the other hand, the Hamilton Beach is only $60, but it couldn&#;t quite compete with the quality of the Cuckoo; however, if you want to save even more money, it&#;s a good buy.
The Cuckoo&#;s rice was a bit stickier and gummier than what we made using the Zojirushi Neuro Fuzzy, but it was still fluffy and had a nice consistency. The Cuckoo also had a shorter cook time than many of the other rice cookers at just 34 minutes. Its Quick Cook function didn&#;t cut much time off the process, however, and still took 32 minutes.
The CR-F has the standard features you&#;ll find in most quality rice cookers like a Keep Warm mode and Quick Cook, along with different presets for different types of cooks like brown rice and porridge. However, this Cuckoo has one feature that we didn&#;t see on any other rice cooker: Auto Clean. If you don&#;t want to scrub the nonstick pot after you make rice (which isn&#;t all that hard, to be fair), you can put some water in the pot and turn on Auto Clean, which uses steam to loosen up any debris. It does take 25 minutes, so it&#;s a slower process than just washing it in the sink, but it requires less labor, which might be appealing to some.
Kai Burkhardt/CNN
The one feature the Cuckoo rice cooker doesn&#;t have that we&#;d love is a handle. Most other rice cookers we tested had one, which makes them a lot easier to take in and out of storage. But besides that small detail, there really isn&#;t much to not like about the CR-F. It&#;s simple to use, it cooks delicious rice and its red coloring looks cute on the counter. If you&#;re looking for a good but not great rice cooker for less than $100, the Cuckoo CR-F is definitely the one to buy.
Rice cookers can vary a lot in price; you can find one at your local Target or Walmart for $25 or spend more than $700 on Zojirushi&#;s latest model. To help you figure out what you want out of your rice cooker, we&#;re breaking down the basics.
With the more expensive cookers, you&#;re paying for more advanced cooking technology, larger capacity, additional pressure cooking features and more elaborate digital controls.
At the most basic level, a rice cooker will just be a little pot with a lid that is placed on a heating element to cook rice &#; the same process as what you&#;d do on the stovetop, just in its own appliance and on a timer. These cookers don&#;t normally make rice any better than you would over a burner, but they do tend to be small so you can save space.
We suggest stepping up to at least the next level, the slightly more expensive rice cookers that have a lid that locks in place and seals, so less steam is released during the cooking process, meaning a higher-quality cook. The Hamilton Beach Digital Programmable Rice Cooker & Food Steamer is a great example of a machine like this, and there are other popular options from brands like Aroma, Tiger and Zojirushi that are built similarly. Normally this level of rice cooker introduces more modes for specific types of rice like brown rice and functions like Quick Cook and Keep Warm.
Kai Burkhardt/CNN
The next level introduces digital controls and computer chips to help perfect the cooking process. Like the &#;Micom&#; (Zojirushi&#;s abbreviation for &#;microcomputer&#;) in the Neuro Fuzzy, these computer chips help judge the ratio of water and rice to adjust the cook and produce the best possible rice regardless of type or recipe. These rice cookers can vary a lot in price depending on other features.
We think this level of rice cooker is enough to satisfy almost everyone&#;s rice cooking needs, thanks to their ability to cook deliciously fluffy rice. Throughout our testing, we tried some fancier machines that use induction heating, but found that the quality of rice didn&#;t improve much. We tested three rice cookers with induction heating, but we thought the Neuro Fuzzy cooked as good if not better rice than all of them. But if you do want to invest more in a rice cooker, induction heating produces higher temperatures, which can theoretically lead to fluffier rice.
The real top-of-the-line rice cookers are induction units as well but are also fully sealed so they can function like pressure cookers, supposedly creating the perfect environment for rice. We didn&#;t test any rice cookers with every one of these features in this round because they tend to be extremely expensive &#; like the $700 top-of-the-line Zojirushi.
We did test a couple of pressure cookers like the Instant Pot to pit them against traditional rice cookers, but every batch of rice we made in them came out extremely gummy and wet; the quality just wasn&#;t on par with most of the other rice cookers we tried.
We tested 18 rice cookers by cooking two cups of the Nishiki medium grain rice on the plain/white rice setting. We compared the taste and consistency of each rice against similar models and narrowed the pool down to a smaller group of finalists. We then cooked another batch of white rice, a batch of Lundberg long grain basmati rice and a batch of Lundberg short grain brown rice. We compared the cook of these batches against one another and weighed other factors such as extra features, ease of cleaning, size, design and more.
Performance
Design/build quality assessments
The Hamilton Beach rice cooker was almost one of our picks, but it just couldn&#;t beat out the Cuckoo CR-F. If the Cuckoo is still a bit too expensive for you, we&#;d definitely recommend going for the $60 Hamilton Beach Digital Programmable Rice Cooker. It&#;s got the same features as more expensive machines like Quick Cook and Keep Warm, and it cooked rice better than any other rice cooker in its price range &#; other than the Cuckoo CR-F. The rice quality is definitely a step down from the CR-F, but it&#;s still solid and will do the job for people who eat rice only every once in a while. Plus, it includes a steamer basket that you can use to wash your rice or cook vegetables.
The Tiger JKT-D10U made rice just as delicious as the Zojirushi Neuro Fuzzy. It was a top performer in all of our rice tests, but since it&#;s more expensive than the Zojirushi Neuro Fuzzy, we think the Zojirushi is the better buy. If you are a loyal Tiger fan and you&#;re looking to make top-notch rice, you can&#;t go wrong with the Tiger JKT-D10U.
This Zojirushi cooker has a computer chip in it just like the Neuro Fuzzy, but it didn&#;t make the same quality of rice. It&#;s a solid rice cooker, but we think the Neuro Fuzzy outshines it in nearly every way. For $30 more, we think our best overall pick is the way to go.
This Zojirushi rice cooker also cooked delicious rice, but it wasn&#;t quite at the same level as the Neuro Fuzzy or the Tiger JKT-D10U. It does have induction heating, so if you want a rice cooker with that technology this is a good option. However, this cooker is only available in a 3-cup size, so if you&#;re making rice for more than two to three people at once it might be too small for your needs.
This rice cooker had a very solid performance. It cooked tasty rice and had plenty of useful features. It was in contention for our runner-up spot, but the Cuckoo CR-F had similar qualities for just around $80. The Tiger JAX-T10U-K is more expensive than our pick, but you definitely won&#;t be disappointed if you choose this Tiger machine.
The Panasonic rice cooker features induction heating, but we didn&#;t think it made a better pot of rice than the Neuro Fuzzy. In fact, we thought the Panasonic&#;s rice was on par with some of the mid-tier cookers we tested, which is why we don&#;t think it&#;s worth the high price tag.
This Aroma rice cooker was almost our budget pick, since it made a solid pot of rice, has great features like quick cook and has an attractive stainless steel body. However, we had issues with the steam vent when we cooked rice. The steam that came out would pool on the top of the lid and spill over onto the counter, making a wet, sticky mess.
This rice cooker has a simple lid that doesn&#;t trap in much heat, leading to a mushier rice. Most rice cookers we tested with this feature didn&#;t make very good rice, and the Zojirushi was no exception. We did like it better than the other simple options, so if you want a tiny rice cooker and don&#;t mind mediocre rice it could be a good purchase; however, we think you&#;re better off spending the extra $10 for the Hamilton Beach.
The rice from this Aroma had a burnt bottom and didn&#;t come out very well at all. The Professional Version is definitely a better option than this one for about $10 more, but we still recommend the Hamilton Beach over both Aroma machines.
Similar to the Oster DiamondForce, we really don&#;t think this rice cooker is worth buying. If you spend the extra money on the Hamilton Beach, you&#;ll get much better rice and a better cooking experience too.
This massive, 10-cup rice cooker took up tons of counter space and didn&#;t cook very good rice. The bottom of the rice was burnt and it didn&#;t taste quite as fluffy as the rice from the Hamilton Beach machine. Unless you&#;re cooking for a large family and need a huge amount of rice (the Hamilton Beach can cook 7 cups), we don&#;t think this rice cooker is worth your money.
This tiny, 2-cup rice cooker is cute, but it didn&#;t cook very good rice. It could be a good gift for someone living in a small apartment or a college dorm, but we still think the Hamilton Beach or Zojirushi NHS-06 are better options.
The Oster DiamondForce made some pretty mediocre rice. It&#;s cheap, but we think spending the extra money on the Hamilton Beach or even the Zojirushi NHS-06 is well worth it.
We wanted to see if a pressure cooker could make rice at the same level as a dedicated rice cooker, but unfortunately the results were underwhelming. The rice from the Instant Pot Duo Plus was gummier and mushier than most of the traditional rice cookers we tried. If you want to consolidate kitchen appliances, the Instant Pot is a great pick, but if you&#;re just looking for a rice cooker we don&#;t think it can compete.
This pressure cooker from Cuckoo had similar results as the Instant Pot. The rice we cooked was mushy and didn&#;t taste very good at all. The machine has tons of other functions, so it might be worth a look if you&#;re in the market for a pressure cooker, but it isn&#;t worth the money if you just want a rice cooker.
The Tiger JBV-A10U just didn&#;t cook rice as well as most of the other rice cookers. We think your money is better spent on the Cuckoo CR-F, which is around the same price as this one.
Most models can also be used to cook other grains, such as oats, quinoa, or polenta, and you can even use a rice cooker to make no-stir risotto . Beyond that, some offer the ability to steam veggies or dumplings, keep rice warm for hours, or even bake cakes. To help navigate the many different options on the market, we tested almost 20 popular models to see which ones perform best.
Although the process of cooking rice on the stovetop is fairly straightforward, it's also easy to under- or over-cook your rice. If you've wound up with a pot of crunchy or mushy grains, you know that cooking rice requires precise timing, temperature control, and supervision. Rice cookers allow you to make a pot of perfectly textured, fluffy rice without any guesswork or babysitting.
Best Overall
Cuckoo Rice Cooker
PHOTO: Amazon
$280 at Amazon
$280 at Walmart
$280 at Macy's
What We Like
Huge capacity
Voice directions
Many cooking modes
What We Don't Like
Expensive
Bulky
In general, rice cookers make the process of cooking rice very easy. This one even has a computerized voice that talks you through everything, reminding you to lock the pressure-cooking lid and alerting you as your rice gets closer to finished. It's a fun and luxurious feature, and it's just one of several that make the Cuckoo worth its price tag.
This is an enormous machine, with a capacity of 10 cups of dry rice&#;that's 20 cups of cooked rice. But as a pressure cooker, the Cuckoo cuts down on cooking time for larger amounts. It made a full batch of white rice in about 25 minutes, and there's a special turbo mode that cuts that time by almost half. The nurungji mode creates a layer of crispy browned rice on the bottom of the bowl beneath a layer of perfectly cooked rice, and the multi-cook setting is meant to steam rice and an entree at the same time. We especially enjoyed trying out the GABA rice mode, which soaks brown rice in just-warm water for hours to start the germination process and release the amino acid, then cooks it to perfection.
Meant for big families who make rice multiple times per week, the Cuckoo is truly full-featured and can make lots of different dishes. It's heavy and takes up a lot of space, but it's also a workhorse that's designed to stay on the counter and can hold up to long-term daily use. It's on the pricey side, but we think it offers the best balance of cost and features.
Capacity (Uncooked Rice): 10 cups | Power: 1,150 watts | Time to Cook White Rice: About 25 minutes | Dimensions: 14.2 x 11.6 x 10.2 inches | Weight: 16 pounds
The Spruce Eats / Sonal Dutt
The Spruce Eats / Nick Simpson
The Spruce Eats / Sonal Dutt
The Spruce Eats / Nick Simpson
The Spruce Eats / Sonal Dutt
The Spruce Eats / Nick Simpson
The Spruce Eats / Nick Simpson
The Spruce Eats / Nick Simpson
Best Budget
Aroma Housewares 8-Cup Rice Cooker
PHOTO: Amazon
$30 at Amazon
$33 at Walmart
$50 at Kohls.com
What We Like
Inexpensive
Multiple cooking functions
Digital controls and display
What We Don't Like
Small capacity
Considering how expensive high-end rice cookers can get, this one is shockingly affordable for its performance and features. The controls are basic, but they include separate modes for white rice, brown rice, and steaming, as well as a simple display that counts down the cooking time remaining. We found excellent results testing the machine with sushi, jasmine, and brown rice&#;especially the latter, which came out fluffy and not sticky at all. It automatically switches over to keep-warm mode when it's done cooking, so you don't have to worry about being right there in the kitchen as the timer ends.
The Aroma holds 8 cups of cooked rice (or 4 cups pre-cooking), which is on the smaller side for rice cookers but still enough to feed a medium-sized family. That also helps reduce its countertop footprint. The steamer basket and other accessories all stow away in or on the machine, which has a compact carrying handle that makes it easier to move around or tuck away in a cabinet.
Cleaning is also easy, as the pot has a heavy-duty nonstick coating that didn't give us any trouble washing by hand during testing. (The pot, steamer tray, and all accessories are dishwasher-safe, though the manual itself confusingly recommends hand washing only.) The only difficulty we had was getting a sponge into the small condensation collector area to wipe it down.
All in all, this is a great first rice cooker to test the concept of cooker versus stovetop, and we used it for many years, successfully. It was simple to understand and operate and reliably cooked white rice every time. Sure, it&#;s not as fancy or polished as some, but when we needed rice to serve with our chop suey or refried beans, this one fit the bill.
Capacity (Uncooked Rice): 4 cups | Power: 450 watts | Time to Cook White Rice: About 25 minutes | Dimensions: 8.6 x 8.5 x 9.3 inches | Weight: 4.9 pounds
The Spruce Eats / Katie Akin
The Spruce Eats / Nick Simpson
The Spruce Eats / Nick Simpson
The Spruce Eats / Nick Simpson
Best Multipurpose
KitchenAid Grain and Rice Cooker
PHOTO: Amazon
$220 at Amazon
What We Like
Link to Foshan Osno
No need for measuring
Presets for grains, rice, beans
Custom programs can be saved
What We Don't Like
No sauté feature
No simple way to cook a little longer after time is up
This new device from KitchenAid is our new best friend in the kitchen. Not only can it cook rice and other grains, but it also has a steaming function that can be used on its own, or foods can be steamed on top of rice or beans cooking below, as long as you don&#;t mind a little bit of flavor mingling&#;not a big deal if you&#;re serving them together.
Unlike other cookers that tell you to measure the rice and then add a measured amount of water, often using lines marked on the inner pot for different types of rice, this cooker is much more sophisticated. For one thing, it has an integrated scale. We simply poured rice or beans or lentils into the pot until it looked just about right. When the amount isn&#;t within the right range for cooking properly without boiling over, the cooker told us during the next steps. The correct amount of water is added automatically from the integrated reservoir. Oh, but what if you want to cook in chicken stock? There&#;s a setting for that, so we could add the correct amount based on the weight of the food.
The cooker has settings for a wide variety of rice, beans, and grains. It doesn&#;t, however, have a setting for polenta, but we cooked that using the setting for steel-cut oats and it was great. You can choose firmer, normal, or softer settings for each food, too. There are also custom settings, and those can be saved. We&#;re planning on creating settings for extra-soft beans for refried beans, as well as well-cooked congee.
While the steamer basket is fairly small because it&#;s designed to perch above the food, we successfully cooked a whole cauliflower right in the pot. We like the delay-cook setting, so the cooker can be set up in the morning, and ready in time for dinner. Whatever is cooked, there&#;s a keep-warm setting, so if the main dish is taking a bit too long, the rice will wait politely.
Is there anything this can&#;t do? Sure. There&#;s no sauté setting to cook vegetables or rice before adding the water. But that&#;s a small thing, considering all the other things this can do. There is also no automated way to add a little more time after the cooking time is up.
Capacity (Uncooked Rice): 4.25 cups (of Jasmine rice) | Power: 750 watts | Time to Cook White Rice: 30 minutes (on the Jasmine rice setting) | Dimensions: 9.75 x 13.5 x 8.88 inches | Weight: 10.5 ounces
The Spruce Eats / Donna Currie
The Spruce Eats / Donna Currie
The Spruce Eats / Donna Currie
The Spruce Eats / Donna Currie
The Spruce Eats / Donna Currie
Best Splurge
Zojirushi Induction Rice Cooker
PHOTO: Amazon
$322 at Amazon
$342 at Walmart
$365 at Williams-Sonoma
What We Like
Induction heat control
Many settings and options
Great for brown rice
What We Don't Like
Very expensive
Slow
Every rice cooker that made this list does at least a pretty good job of cooking rice; it's more the size, design features, and extras that set one apart from another. This model&#;on the higher end of the range for Zojirushi, which is a luxury brand in general&#;offers ultimate rice-cooking customization. It uses induction heating for precise temperature control, and it has 11 different cooking options. Just for white rice alone, you can choose from standard, softer, and harder doneness, as well as special settings for jasmine and sushi rice, and a quick-cook function.
If you want hot rice at the ready at all times, this is the perfect machine for you: It has a pre-cooking timer you can set so a batch is done exactly when you want it, as well as a post-cooking keep-warm mode that can run for a full 24 hours. In our tests with both sushi and basmati rice, we got fluffy grains that didn't stick to each other or to the pot. Thanks to a nonstick pot and lid that keep everything contained and are both removable for easy washing by hand, cleanup is also very easy.
After continuing to test this machine at home for a while now, we still recommend it. We&#;ve never been the biggest fan of brown rice until this rice cooker came along. The gaba brown rice setting takes a long time, since it soaks the rice first, before cooking. But the result is the best brown rice we&#;ve ever had, and there was no need to buy rice that was labeled as GABA&#;any brown rice works perfectly.
One of the best features is the ability to schedule a cook, so we could wake up to steaming hot and perfectly cooked oatmeal. Thanks to the nonstick finish in the cooking bowl, it was easy to clean, which is a huge deal when dealing with rice that can be sticky. After many years of use, the body has a few dents from mysterious falling objects, but the cooking bowl looks virtually new, and this still works very well.
Now for the downsides. The main one is its huge price: This is a machine only worth the investment if you're going to make rice almost every day, especially if you like to make all different types of rice for different dishes. Like other Zojirushi machines, it's also fairly slow. The gentle cooking helps with rice texture, but our test batches of white rice took 45 and 55 minutes to cook, and brown rice took 90 minutes.
Capacity (Uncooked Rice): 5.5 cups | Power: 1,230 watts | Time to Cook White Rice: About 50 minutes | Dimensions: 10 x 14 x 8 inches | Weight: 9 pounds
The Spruce Eats / Elizabeth Theriot
The Spruce Eats / Elizabeth Theriot
The Spruce Eats / Donna Currie
The Spruce Eats / Donna Currie
The Spruce Eats / Donna Currie
Best Small-Capacity
Aroma Housewares 6-Cup Rice and Grain Cooker
PHOTO: Amazon
$20 at Amazon
$29 at Walmart
What We Like
Inexpensive
Can cook rice and entrée simultaneously
What We Don't Like
Rice sticks to pot on keep warm mode
The 6-cup Aroma model is an excellent all-in-one machine for a single person. Its steamer insert is designed to cook a main course and the rice underneath at the same time, so you can make a multi-course dinner. Rice, salmon, and asparagus for one, say? This machine can do that. Just note that it can only do that one serving at a time.
The options here are pretty minimal: There's one cook setting controlled by an analog switch, with a simple glass lid that doesn't lock into place. Nothing can go in the dishwasher. The inner steamer does have its own cool-touch handles, which is a nice feature.
In testing, the Aroma did decently, though there was some variability from batch to batch: Jasmine rice came out perfect once and overdone a second time. (The small capacity means that small variances in the exact amount of rice and water make a big difference; measure carefully!) The machine automatically turns to keep-warm mode when it's done cooking, though the rice started to harden and stick to the pot after a short time, so we wouldn't recommend letting keep warm run for too long.
Oh, and did we mention this thing costs 20 bucks? If you're not looking for a large rice cooker or one with a lot of bells and whistles, this model's a steal.
Capacity (Uncooked Rice): 3 cups | Power: 300 watts | Time to Cook White Rice: about 18 minutes | Dimensions: 10.4 x 11.1 x 8.1 inches | Weight: 3.5 pounds
The Spruce Eats / Rebecca Baer
The Spruce Eats / Rebecca Baer
The Spruce Eats / Rebecca Baer
Best Large-Capacity
Zojirushi Rice Cooker
PHOTO: Amazon
$216 at Amazon
$220 at Walmart
$220 at Target
What We Like
Huge capacity
Excellent cooking
Many modes and options
What We Don't Like
Expensive
Long cook times
This Rice Cooker Will Make You Stop Cooking It on the Stovetop Forever
From the self-regulating time and temperature to the jaunty little tunes that play when cooking starts and finishes, most everything about this rice cooker is friendly. (Don't worry; you can change the songs to simple beeps if you prefer.) It has separate modes for white, brown, and sweet (aka sticky) rice, plus a general steaming setting and steamer insert. This thing can even bake a cake! It uses the nonstick rice pot as a baking dish.
Our testing resulted in beautifully cooked batches of white, brown, and basmati rice, all of which were better than we could manage on the stovetop. They also maintained their texture and temperature beautifully on keep-warm mode&#;even after four hours, there was a cloud of warm steam upon opening the lid, and the rice didn't stick at all.
Zojirushi machines cook gently for excellent rice texture, but the downside is that they cook slowly; this model needs an hour for white rice and 110 minutes (nearly two hours) for brown. There's a "quick" mode that works with only a minimal decrease in quality, but it still takes 40 minutes. However, the timer helps; you can set rice to finish cooking at whatever time of day you want, up to 24 hours ahead. In tests, it's nailed the time, starting to heat up at the perfect moment to finish cooking at the exact moment it's scheduled to.
This Zojirushi model is certainly on the more expensive side, but it's also huge, able to cook 10 cups at once and keep it hot and fresh for up to 12 hours. If you eat rice every day, or anywhere close to every day, it's worth the splurge.
Capacity (Uncooked Rice): 10 cups | Power: 820 watts | Time to Cook White Rice: 60 minutes | Dimensions: 9.9 x 15 x 11.2 inches | Weight: 11.7 pounds
The Spruce Eats / Jason Horn
The Spruce Eats / Kristina Razon
The Spruce Eats / Jason Horn
The Spruce Eats / Jason Horn
The Spruce Eats / Jason Horn
The Spruce Eats / Jason Horn
The Spruce Eats / Jason Horn
The Spruce Eats / Jason Horn
The Spruce Eats / Jason Horn
We Found the Best Sous Vide Cookers&#;Get Your Vacuum Bags Ready!
Best Stovetop
Presto Stainless Steel Pressure Cooker
PHOTO: Amazon
$68 at Amazon
$69 at Walmart
$80 at Wayfair
What We Like
Works on any style cooktop
Multitasker
Automatic pressure regulator
What We Don't Like
More complicated than an electric rice cooker
While our testing included only electric countertop rice cookers, you can of course make delicious rice on the stove extra-quickly by using a pressure cooker. This is our top recommended stovetop pressure cooker, with a safety release valve and automatic pressure regulator that simplify the sometimes-intimidating setup process. It's more complicated to use for rice than an automated rice cooker, but you can also use the Presto to speed-cook everything from pulled pork to risotto. You can also just leave the pot unpressurized and use it like any standard saucepan.
This model has a 6-quart capacity and is made from rustproof, nonreactive stainless steel. It can be used on any type of stove, including induction, and it has a long heatproof handle, as well as a knobby helper, handle on the other side to make it easy to move even when full. The pot and lid are dishwasher-safe for easy cleaning, though you have to remove the sealing ring and pressure regulator first.
Capacity: 6 quarts | Power: N/A | Time to Cook White Rice: 5-8 minutes | Dimensions: 17.3 x 9.1 x 8.8 inches | Weight: 5.3 pounds
If you want to learn more, please visit our website Rice Cooker Production Line.