Out of all the rice cookers we tested, these are the ones we love the most
Overview
Table of Contents
Rice is a staple in many families' diets, and such a staple should always be cooked well. If you're still resorting to cooking rice on the stove, we're here to say that a rice cooker will make your rice much, much better than you could ever cook in a pot.
Rice cookers are not all created equal. The simplest rice cookers will have a cooking setting and a keep warm setting, while the fanciest options will be able to cook basically every kind of rice and grain under the sun. Basic rice cookers merely bring water to a boil and shut off when the water is completely evaporated, but the more comprehensive cookers simulate soaking, boiling, and steaming the rice, leading to perfect, fluffy grains.
Why are Japanese and Korean rice cookers so expensive?
You really get what you pay for with a rice cooker — oftentimes the more expensive models will cook rice far better than their cheaper counterparts. Japanese and Korean brands are often pricey because they contain advanced rice cooking tech. Many high end rice cookers from brands like Zojirushi, Cuckoo, and Tiger contain Micom (short for microcomputer) technology. Micom tech essentially turns the rice cooker into a smart cooker, allowing it to adjust cooking time, temperature, and more to create the perfect batch of grains. This reduces room for human error by a lot, and makes these kinds of rice cookers virtually foolproof.
Japanese and Korean rice cookers normally have far more settings for different types of rice than other models too, and these dedicated settings ensure the proper cooking time and temperature for each kind of grain, from sushi rice to germinated brown rice.
Do I need to rinse my rice before cooking it?
In most cases, not even a rice cooker can make un-rinsed rice appetizing. Most rice varieties need to be rinsed before cooking to remove any impurities, as well as reduce the amount of starch that's stuck on the grains. Removing starch through rinsing ensures that you don't end up with overly sticky or gummy rice and helps the grains cook more evenly.
There are few exceptions to this rule, one of them being enriched white rice. If you're working with enriched rice that has added vitamins and minerals, rinsing will remove those extra nutrients.
Which rice cooker is the best?
As a general rule, we don't recommend rice cookers that don't have locking lids. We find that type of rice cooker is far too messy and doesn't trap heat well enough to make good rice. You'll only find rice cookers with locking lids on this list, as they perform the best.
With that being said, our top pick is the Zojirushi Neuro Fuzzy rice cooker. It's pricey, but the variety of functions and the perfect rice it churns out make it worth it. For a multi-purpose pick, the Instant Pot Duo Plus makes decent rice, and as a mid-priced option, the Cuckoo CR-0655F makes fantastic rice for the price.
Read on to discover more about our top nine rice cookers, and find the best one for your household — at every price point.
Cuckoo CR-0655F Micom Rice Cooker
Best bang for your buck
The Good & The Bad
- LCD display with nine settings
- Nice design
- Automatic steam cleaning function
- Shorter cook time than most models
- No handle for easy movement
Why We Like It
This is the perfect rice cooker for anyone who wants quality rice, but doesn't want to pay for a premium-priced rice cooker. Regularly on sale for around $80, the CR-0655F model from Korean brand Cuckoo did a fantastic job during our tests. The rice it made was slightly stickier than the rice made in the Neuro Fuzzy, but it still had a solid texture — much better than other budget models. It also cooked much faster than the Neuro Fuzzy, making it ideal for quick weeknight dinners.
The CR-0655F cooking pot is made of aluminum with a nonstick coating and sports a sleek red and white design on the outside. Each setting button features both English and Korean, and there's a handy steam cleaning function to freshen up your cooker between uses, which sets it apart from other rice cookers in a similar price range.
Details
Zojirushi Neuro Fuzzy
Our top pick
The Good & The Bad
- Makes fluffy rice every time
- Will never burn on the bottom
- Wide variety of settings
- Super easy to clean
- Sings a song when you start cooking and when the rice is done
- Will last practically a whole lifetime
- Top handle for easy moving
- The cooking time is a bit slow
Why We Like It
Though the Zojirushi Neuro Fuzzy retails for $256, it's frequently on sale at Amazon for around $190. While that may seem like a lot of money for a rice cooker, this will likely be the last rice cooker you buy in your lifetime. The Neuro Fuzzy is in the mid range of Zojirushi's rice cooker lineup, and it's hard to imagine a rice cooker that makes more perfectly cooked rice.
It's somewhat hard to explain how good the rice from this rice cooker is. After all, rice is rice, right? Wrong. If you've only ever eaten stovetop rice and then try Neuro Fuzzy rice, you're in for a huge surprise. During testing, the rice made in this rice cooker was always perfectly fluffy, never mushy, sticky, or burnt. It's virtually impossible to mess up a batch of rice in this cooker, since it features smart Fuzzy Logic technology which adjusts temperature, pressure, and cook time automatically depending on what's happening inside the pot.
The Neuro Fuzzy is also extremely versatile, with functions for normal white rice, sushi rice, quick cooking, porridge, sweet rice, brown rice, and more. We found it to excel particularly at cooking most short grain varieties, but it turns out brown rice excellently as well. The cooking time is a bit slow compared to other models, but we think the extra time is worth the wait — just plan to start your rice well before dinner time.
Details
Tiger Micom Rice Cooker
Best for making a whole meal
The Good & The Bad
- Made for cooking rice or grains, plus a veggies and meat at the same time
- Five different settings
- Makes much better rice than the cheaper options
- Frequently on sale
- Rice isn't as good as the Cuckoo or Neuro Fuzzy models we tested
Why We Like It
If you’re looking for a magical appliance that will cook a whole meal at once, then the Micom rice cooker from Tiger is the one for you. It has multiple functions, including a slow cooker, food steamer, and a synchronized cooking setting that work together to make dinner time a breeze.
Although it’s minimal in its design, this rice cooker specializes in creating meals with multiple components without losing the flavor of each food element. That means you could cook rice, fish, and veggies together without each one smelling and tasting like each other. Tiger manages to do this with its specially designed cooking plate and pot that doesn’t affect the rice’s flavor or texture.
The Tiger Micom rice cooker comes with a non-stick rice paddle and spatula, a cooking plate, a measuring cup, and a cookbook that is full of recipes for "Synchrony-cooking." The rice itself doesn't come out quite as fluffy as the Neuro Fuzzy or the Cuckoo CR-0655F, but this is still a solid multi-use appliance.
Details
Instant Pot Duo Plus
Most versatile
The Good & The Bad
- Eight different cooking functions
- Cooks very quickly
- Easy to clean
- Doesn't cook rice as well as dedicated rice cookers
- Somewhat of a learning curve when cooking rice
Why We Like It
Let's be real, not everyone has room to store an appliance that only cooks rice, especially if they don't eat rice very often. That's where an Instant Pot shines. We chose the Duo Plus, since it's one of the simplest models Instant Pot offers (the Duo will soon be phased out) with only features you'll actually use. You won't get the perfect, super fluffy rice you might get in a high quality rice cooker, but the Instant Pot Duo does what it needs to in terms of rice cooking — with a little bit of experimentation on your part. During testing, our first few batches came out sticky and clumpy, and we had to do some measurement adjustment to improve the quality of the rice.
Another selling point of getting an Instant Pot over a rice cooker is that it cooks extremely fast thanks to locked-in pressure. You can have rice on your plate in under 15 minutes, which is a speed you likely won't find with a normal rice cooker.
Details
The Good & The Bad
- Six different cooking functions, plus a keep warm setting
- Includes a steamer/rinse basket
- Delay start feature to schedule dinner
- Solid price
- Doesn't make rice as good as the Cuckoo or Zojirushi models we tested
Why We Like It
We promise that the Cuckoo and Zojirushi models on this list make the best rice, but we also get that spending $80+ on a rice cooker can seem like a lot (especially if you've never had one before). For folks who don't eat a ton of rice or who just want to spend a little bit less, this Hamilton Beach model makes good rice for the price.
You'll also get features that we normally only see on more expensive models, like a quick cook setting and a delay-start feature — both which will help you get food on the table faster.
Details
Topics Instant Pot Kitchen
We hands-on tested each of the rice cookers on this list by cooking short grain white rice and brown rice in each one. We directly compared taste and texture of each cooker to choose only the best ones of the pool.
We also tested the Dash mini rice cooker, the Zojirushi 3-cup rice cooker, and the Black & Decker 6-cup rice cooker, but found that all of these created a starchy, bubbly water mess during the cooking process, due to their glass top lids. None of these models cooked rice as well as the other models with locking lids — and even though they're some of the most affordable models we tested, we don't recommend them. Your money is better spent by opting for a mid-priced rice cooker like the Cuckoo CR-0655F or the Hamilton Beach digital programmable rice cooker and food steamer.
Things we looked out for during testing:
Rice texture and taste: We compared the taste and texture of the rice made by each rice cooker. Cookers that burned on the bottom, came out too mushy or too hard were disqualified.
Settings: We noted the amount of cook settings and extra features in each rice cooker, and compared them to the price — so you know which ones give you the best bang for your buck. Important settings we looked out for were quick cook and keep warm functions.
Clean up process: We only chose rice cookers that were easy to clean and didn't make a complete mess while cooking. This was one of the reasons why steamer type rice cookers with glass lids were disqualified.
Jae Thomas is a Colorado-based Shopping Editor for Mashable. They specialize in pet tech, smart fitness gear, finding the perfect gift, and sourcing the top deals on shopping holidays like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Jae has worked at Mashable since 2020, where they've written countless deals roundups and product reviews. Before Jae came to Mashable, they received a B.A. in Journalism and English Literature from New York University and wrote food and lifestyle content for publications like Bon Appétit, Epicurious, The Daily Beast, Apartment Therapy, and Marie Claire.
When they're not testing products or writing about online shopping, you'll find Jae whipping up an elaborate meal, hiking, camping, or training their dogs, Miso and Dashi. Reach out to them on X at @jaetaurina or by email at [email protected].
