However, you might need to tweak the amount of water in your recipe if you prefer softer brown rice—our batches came out quite al dente, though not unpleasantly so. However, as rice cooking is quite vigorous, the lids tend to spit out water and steam at the edges, which can be dangerous. We also wanted flavorful grains that were cooked through without being gummy and retained bite without being too firm. Brown rice took just an hour in the Hamilton Beach (nearly half the time of the Zojirushi), about the same length of time as when you’re cooking it on the stove.

This model is large enough to cook four servings of rice and can also be used to make couscous, quinoa and other grains. It comes with a similarly sturdy cooking pot and has an intuitive, easy-to-use digital interface with a Keep Warm function and preprogramming options. In our tests, short-grain white rice cooked wickedly fast—in just 27 minutes, faster than on the quick-cook setting of any of the other machines we tested. Nothing went wrong and no issue, had there been any, I believe I would have received prompt and good quality support. Like Ellen (see caption above), Joel notes the slowness of the machine: “The main drawback of the Neuro Fuzzy (NF) is the lengthy cook time.

The Cuckoo CRP-P1009 makes the best sushi rice of all the cookers we tested—chewy, distinctive grains that hold together perfectly.

AUTOMATIC KEEP WARM FUNCTION】: Prepare the ingredients and make a preset before going out, then you can enjoy delicious rice when you get home. And if you’re curious about the difference between a rice cooker and the Instant Pot—our favorite electric pressure cooker—we explain the pros and cons of the two machines below. Lacking pressure, this model was slower than other Cuckoo cookers, but it made better basmati and softer brown rice. However, when the multi-cooker is used consistently to cook strong-flavoured foods like curries and stews, or for air- or deep-frying, it will eventually taint the flavour of rice.Tefal has various all-in-one machines in its range, but for rice cooking, this pressure cooker hybrid scores highly. Each machine’s countertop footprint varied—most of the models we tested measured in at under a foot in diameter, which meant they didn’t take up much more room than a food processor.

In addition, it sports modes for delayed cooking and brown rice—though our brown rice came out a little underdone.

If we mismeasured the rice-to-water ratio even slightly, the grains congealed together in a gelled lattice of mush. Because, for such a simple process, making rice is finicky, and no home cook wants to put out an overdone or underdone batch. Every rice cooker comes with a couple of key accessories: a measuring cup (don’t get confused, “1 cup” in rice cooker parlance is actually a ¾-cup measure) and a rice paddle.

And yet often — no matter if you’re an amateur in the kitchen or consider yourself pretty accomplished — the final result is a letdown.

Excellent for people like me who get overwhelmed easily with too many instructions, buttons and functions.