Equipment Review: High-Tech Rice Cookers

I’ve always followed standard stovetop procedure with rice: simmer gently, never peek, never stir. And the results have been perfectly fine. But when I made rice in some of the top fuzzy-logic rice cookers on the market, I realized that my stovetop method was no match.

And what is a fuzzy-logic rice cooker? Basically, it’s an intelligent version of a no-frills rice cooker. Instead of just an on/off button, a fuzzy-logic rice cooker has a micro-computer that lets the machine regulate time and temperature according to the type of rice being cooked (brown rice, for example, cooks at a lower temperature than white rice). It can cook more kinds of rice than you’ve ever heard of—including sweet and germinated brown—and some models can even cook oatmeal or polenta, steam vegetables, and make stew. But what really sold us on the cookers was how well they handle the white and brown rice we use every day.

Such sophistication comes at a price, though. Even our Best Buy costs more than $100. And these cookers will also cost you time: Expect to wait 45 to 50 minutes for white rice to cook, more for brown.

Test results

All but one of the cookers we tried made excellent white rice. But in tasks beyond cooking white rice, the models showed their true colors. Our favorites (shown here) had special settings and guidelines for cooking finicky brown rice and did a better job than cookers without those special settings.

Best all-around

Zojirushi Neuro Fuzzy
Rice Cooker & Steamer
model NS-ZCC10-WZ
$179.99 at EverythingKitchens.com

This 5-1/2-cup cooker is as versatile as it is precise. A chime or tune (your choice) tells you when the cooking cycle is complete, which is especially handy with brown rice because it degrades in flavor and texture if held in the keep-warm setting. It also has a memory setting, which lets the cooker remember how you like a certain type of rice.

Settings & features: quick cook, mixed, porridge, keep warm, extended keep warm, reheat, timer-controlled cooking; removable inner lid for easy cleaning.

Best buy

Sanyo Micro-Computerized
Rice Cooker & Steamer
model ECJ-F50S
$114.95 at Cooking.com

This 5-cup cooker has all the features almost anyone would need. Its only quirk: Brown rice must be washed and left to soak for an hour before cooking, or it will come out undercooked. If you can remember this step, though, you’ll be rewarded with perfect brown rice.

Settings & features: quick cook, mixed, porridge, keep warm; settings to cook stew and dol sot bi bim bab (a classic Korean rice dish in which the bottom layer of rice gets toasted and crisp); steamer insert and removable inner lid for easy cleaning.

A whiz with white rice

Tiger Electric Rice Cooker
model JAG-B10U
$119.99 at Costco.com
(5% more for nonmembers)

This 5-1/2-cup cooker lets you customize white rice’s consistency, gives you the option to “scorch” it, meaning it can toast the bottom layer in the pot for a subtle nutty flavor and lightly crisped texture, and beeps when the cooking cycle is complete. Brown rice cooked unevenly in our tests: fluffy toward the top of the pot, pasty towards the bottom. Also, it’s inconvenient that the inner lid isn’t removable for in-sink cleaning.

Settings & features: quick cook, mixed, porridge, keep warm, reheat, scorch, timer-controlled cooking.