3 Top Rice Cookers
For Cook The Best Rice Every Time Reviews
If you want the best rice with the least amount of hassle, then you want to buy a rice cooker – and these are the best we've tested.
A rice cooker sounds like a superfluous kitchen gadget, a luxury you can do without. If you eat rice regularly, however, it’s well worth splashing out on. The best rice cookers can produce high-quality rice much more consistently, time after time, than most people ever could with a mere saucepan. Plus, a rice cooker will work completely unattended, without requiring monitoring, stirring, straining or any other intervention from you, freeing you up to concentrate on cooking the rest of your meal – or even just sit back and relax.
The three rice cookers listed below are the best that we've tested on Expert Reviews, but if you want to find out more about what to look out for when buying a rice cooker, then scroll to the bottom of the page to read our handy Buyer's Guide.
The best rice cookers: The ones to buy
1. Sage by Heston Blumenthal Risotto Plus : Our favourite budget rice cooker
Not the most refined rice cooker by any stretch, but the Risotto Plus is far more versatile than its name suggests.
It might seem strange to review the Risotto Plus as a general purpose rice cooker, but this appliance actually started out life under the name of ‘the Multi Cooker’. In addition to its risotto and rice modes, it also has settings for slow cooking, sautéing and steaming.
Design and features
Despite its multiple cooking modes, the Risotto Plus is pleasingly minimalist in appearance with an attractive metal build. There’s no need to worry about indecipherable icons on the controls though - the light-up buttons are clearly labelled.
Better still, a steam basket is included so you can steam vegetables while your rice is cooking. The basket even has a handle for easy extraction from the hot rice bowl – a small but important design element missing from the steam baskets included with many other rice cookers.
Cooking performance
Long grain rice was cooked quickly in 13 mins 24 seconds. The results were generally good – moist and fluffy with mostly well-separated grains. A few patches were still clumped together and had a firm bite, but a bigger problem was that rice at the bottom of the bowl was overcooked leading to some crustiness in places. It wasn’t as crusty and hard to the same extent as the Tefal MultiCook Advanced 45-in-1 RK812142, but we never like to see wasted food.
It was a similar story with the short grain rice. It was cooked quickly in 15 minutes and while there was plenty of edible rice, the standard of moistness, softness and fluffiness wasn’t as good as the standards achieved by Zojirushi’s rice cookers. A bigger problem was that the uneven quality of the cooking led to some noticeably soggy patches, while others were overcooked and crusty. In other words, more food wastage.
We achieved better results using the risotto mode to cook our white short grain rice. The cooking time was almost exactly the same, but the results were far less soggy, yet still reasonably sticky and fluffy with no sodden or crusty patches. The grains were a little springy compared to the perfectly soft results achieved by more expensive rice cookers in this test, but it was perfectly enjoyable and still a significant improvement over using the standard rice mode to cook short grain rice.
Although the Risotto Plus does have a Keep Warm mode, it wasn’t up to much. It switched off automatically overnight, but not soon enough to prevent rice from becoming inedibly hard and crusty, as well as cold, when we came back to it the following morning.
This rice cooker is easy to clean, at least when cooking long grain rice – a bit of mess around the inside of the rice bowl and on the upper surface of the lid around the steam exhaust hole was easily cleaned up. It made a much more substantial mess when cooking short grain rice, in both the rice and risotto modes, spewing droplets of excess water around our counter top and creating a thin filmy residue over the top of the lid. This is highly unimpressive.
Verdict
The Sage Risotto Plus isn’t up to the standards set by the company’s other Heston-branded kitchen appliances – such as its bizarrely-named, yet superlative combi microwave The Quick Touch Crisp. Several flaws holding it back from receiving top marks, not least its short grain rice cooking abilities, but that doesn’t mean you should rule it out completely. It’s vastly cheaper than many rival rice cookers, and good enough at cooking long grain rice that it’s still well worth considering.
For Sage by Heston Blumenthal Risotto Plus More Detail Click Here
2. Zojirushi NS-TSQ10: The best rice cooker to buy
If you want the best rice cooker there is, then the Zojirushi NS-TSQ10 is difficult to beat
Zojirushi isn’t a household name in the UK, but its line of rice cookers has a devoted following in Japan, across south eastern Asia and throughout the US. While the high price of the NS-TSQ10 seems unjustifiably extravagant at first glance, we came away deeply impressed by almost every aspect of this rice cooker.
Design and features
The NS-TSQ10 has a capacity of 990g of rice, so this should be enough for all but the biggest family feasts and dinner parties. This is an attractive appliance thanks to its dark grey and metallic colour scheme, while a fold out carry handle means you can easily move it if need be. The onscreen menu seemed odd at first, with the options arranged in a rectangle rather than as a list, but we were soon navigating around this unusual menu system with ease using the buttons on the control panel.
Cooking performance
While long grain rice took a lengthy 44 minutes to cook, the results were almost impeccable. The grains were fully separated, yet soft and moist too. Our batch was cooked almost perfectly even with only a small amount slightly firmer than the rest.
Short grain rice was slightly too moist, but this was a minor flaw and was still superior to almost every other rice cooker we’ve seen so far. Cooked in just under 48 minutes, our two portions of short grain were consistently fluffy and soft. This wasn’t surprising as the difference in weight before and after cooking was substantial - the weight of the rice and water went from 815g before cooking to 643g afterwards. This is a huge change of 23.6%.
Keep Warm mode worked flawlessly, with both long grain and short grain rice. Even after being kept overnight for a total of 12 hours, both types of rice looked and tasted as if they had just been freshly cooked. Cooking a batch of high-quality rice at dinner time and then saving some for lunch the following day is one of the most useful conveniences of a rice cooker, yet the NS-TSQ10 is one of the very few we’ve seen capable of managing it.
Just as welcome was the almost complete lack of mess. Some stray flecks of rice and a few drops of condensation lined the rim of the bowl and the metal inner seal of lid, but this was easy to clean up - especially as the inner lid can be removed fairly easily by pressing down on it and then pulling it away from the rest of the hinged lid. The removable steam vent detaches quickly and easily from the outside of the lid for even easier cleaning.
Verdict
If you eat rice regularly but want all the hassle taken out of cooking it, then the Zojirushi NS-TSQ10 is an essential purchase. It’s a worthy winner of our Best Buy award.
Where to buy Zojirushi Rice Cooker NS-TSQ10 Stainless Steel Brown, 220-230V (Stainless Steel Brown) Click Here
3. ZOJIRUSHI NS-YSQ10 : Expensive, but a brilliant rice cooker
Not everyone will want to spend this kind of money, but for perfect rice every time there's nothing better.
Zojirushi makes superb, market-leading rice cookers, such as the Best Buy award-winning NS-TSQ10 which is excellent in almost every way. It’s not cheap though at just under £200, yet the NS-YSQ10 is even costlier at £269. Even we had our doubts about whether this rice cooker could justify such a high price, but the results speak for themselves.
Cooking performance
Short grain rice was cooked in just over 48 minutes, which is a considerable amount of time, but the restaurant-quality results were truly exemplary. Perfectly soft and fluffy throughout, there wasn’t a rough patch to be found. It had just the right of moistness - neither too dry nor too damp. This is a significant achievement as cooking short grain rice to the same standard manually is hard and the results here were even better than those achieved by the NS-TSQ10. The percentage difference in weight between the raw rice and water and the finished product was high at 23.9%.
Long grain rice cooked by the NS-YSQ10 was indistinguishable from that cooked by the NS-TSQ10. This isn’t something to complain about though - the moist, evenly cooked grains were fully separated and puffy soft too with only an occasional firm bite here and there. It did take a little longer to cook compared to its cheaper stable mate - just under 52 minutes versus 44 minutes, but variations in time are to be expected. Both Zojirushi rice cookers use a microchip and sensors to dynamically adjust the cooking time and temperature as needed.
Keep warm mode and easy cleaning
The same smarts were used in the Keep Warm mode. Our batches of rice looked, smelt and tasted as if they had been freshly cooked, despite being kept overnight. None of the other rice cookers we’ve seen, apart from the NS-TSQ10, have been able to achieve this feat. Having high quality rice on tap isn’t a convenience to be overlooked if you have a busy household with lots of hungry mouths to feed throughout the day.
The rice cooking process produced very little mess, but the NS-YSQ10 is nonetheless easy to clean. The steam vent pops out of the top of the lid, while pressing a button releases the inner metal lid. The manual is excessively detailed, but it’s unlikely you’ll need to refer to it often. Although the onscreen menu is oddly arranged around the edges of a rectangle rather than as a list, it’s very easy to select the option you want using the clearly labelled controls.
Verdict
If money is no question, then the choice is clear - the Zojirushi NS-YSQ10 is the best rice cooker we’ve seen, producing truly brilliant results. Even so, the biggest difference between the NS-YSQ10 and the cheaper NS-TSQ10 is in the quality of the short grain rice. Unless you eat a lot of this type of rice, or just have very high standards, then the cheaper NS-TSQ10 is the better value option for most.
More Review For Zojirushi Rice Cooker NS-YSQ10 Stainless Steel Brown Click Here
