A Guide to All the Different Types of Rice Cookers
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Rice can sometimes be difficult to cook properly, especially if you use a stovetop. If you’re not careful, you may end up with under or over-cooked rice. One of the best things to use to ensure that your cooked rice comes out perfect is a rice cooker. This device eliminates all the hassle and effort when making rice and can even keep it warm for hours. Most manufacturers also include accessories such as a rice paddle or a measuring cup to give you the best rice-cooking experience.
However, before you head out and buy a rice cooker, you need to be aware that there are a couple of types. Learn about them below.
What Are the Types of Rice Cookers?
When choosing a rice cooker for your home or your business, it’s important to consider how much rice you’ll need to make throughout the day and the uses of each type.
Electric Rice Cookers
Most rice cookers fall under this category. An electric rice cooker is simple to operate and maintain and is ideal for cooking smaller quantities of rice. This type of rice cooker doesn’t require any ventilation either and it uses less heat when cooking the perfect rice, making it more environmentally friendly.
Standard Rice Cookers
The standard rice cooker is your no-frills, basic cooker. It typically features only one or two buttons that you’ll need to push to start the cooking process, and it’ll automatically switch to the Keep Warm mode once it’s done cooking. While it doesn’t have any program or cooking options, a standard rice cooker is not only capable of cooking rice but can also steam food.
Multifunction Rice Cookers
Compared to the standard cooker, multifunction rice cookers add a bit more variety to the rice cooking experience. Aside from cooking white rice, multifunction rice cookers have program options for brown rice, sushi rice, wild rice, black rice, and more. This kind of rice cooker also has presets for steaming, sauteing, making soups, baby food, oatmeal, and baking, among others.
Induction Rice Cookers
These rice cookers are certainly among the best rice cookers available today. Induction-heating rice cookers can also be pretty expensive due to their numerous features. An induction rice cooker uses a magnet to create a high-frequency magnetic field that heats up the inner pot quickly. This allows it to provide faster and more consistent heat than conventional rice cookers, making for better, fluffy rice every time.
Gas Rice Cookers
Available in natural gas and liquid propane types, gas rice cookers have a high heat production that is not ideal for small batches of rice. Gas-type rice cookers cook rice by preheating rice grains using a direct heating element and then cooking them through pressure. This type of rice cooker is ideal for establishments that cook large quantities of rice each day.
What Is the Best Type of Rice Cooker to Buy?
There is no single best type of rice cooker to buy as it all depends on your preference regarding its operation, the amount of rice you need to make, how many times you will use the rice cooker in a week, if you want a feature that keeps the cooked rice to stay warm, and so on.
If you want a rice cooker that just cooks rice, is simple, and easy to use, a standard rice cooker will do you good. If you want something that does more, a multi-functional rice cooker might be up your alley.
If you want a rice cooker that cooks rice uniformly and has settings for white rice, brown rice, short-grain rice, and more, you might want to look into an induction heating (IH) rice cooker. Compared to an ordinary rice cooker, an IH rice cooker heats the inner pan quickly thanks to a magnet, bringing in a more consistent heat. An IH rice cooker almost always has a digital screen and multi-functional control pads.
Additionally, an IH rice cooker can have several features that aren’t found in any other cookers. A lot of them have voice command options and multiple language options, and there are even some that have pre-programmed recipes in them.
Which Cooker Is Best for Rice?
The best rice cooker depends on a lot of factors, mostly depending on the user’s needs and preferences. We’ve rounded up the top rice cookers in a list to make it easier for you to know which rice cookers can be your next kitchen companion.
Final Note
There are several types of rice cookers and all of them make rice cooking easier and faster. Depending on how many times you need to cook rice in a day or week and what you will use it for, the best kind of rice cooker will be one that suits your needs.
