Aroma Housewares ARC-914SBD Digital Cool-Touch Rice Grain Cooker and Food Steamer, Stainless, Silver, 4-Cup (Uncooked) / 8-Cup (Cooked)

Delivered to the uk with a USA voltage and plug. A real scam.

I bought this AROMA brand rice cooker to replace a larger vegetable steamer (by a different manufacturer) that had an attachment for cooking rice. I wanted to have a cooker that was primarily for rice, with the option to steam vegetables and/or cook other foods, while being smaller when stored on the countertop, and easier to clean than my old one. Based on other Amazon reviews, I selected this one.

Before I forget to write it, I think it is important to point out that this cooker is rated for 8 cups of COOKED rice, NOT 8 cups of uncooked rice. The usual ratio for regular white rice is 1:2, meaning that if you put in 1 cup of uncooked rice, you will have 2 cups of cooked rice when done. So with this product you can put in a maximum of 4 cups of uncooked rice, and will end up with a maximum of 8 cups of cooked rice.

It is also important to note that if you choose to use the optional (included) vegetable steamer/food cooker tray, this fits inside the rice cooker pot and therefore takes up some of the space in that pot; you can cook rice AND steam vegetables/cook food simultaneously, but you cannot fit the full measure of rice when doing so. In my estimate, if you put in a cup or two of uncooked rice, the vegetable steamer/food cooker tray holds about enough to feed two people when combined with the rice. It is certainly not large enough to simultaneously cook rice and other food in quantities for a family; AROMA makes a similar product with a larger capacity if you need it.

I shopped in several stores (Sears, Bed Bath & Beyond, Target, Macy’s) before buying this cooker. They all carried electric rice cookers, but none had this product. Sears has AROMA products, but only in a less expensive non-digital version, while BB&B had a similar cooker by West Bend that did not look as good in terms of quality. But the majority of places I looked carried only non-digital rice cookers. I mention this because I think the digital ones have a couple of advantages that are significant enough to comment on:

– The cooker is not simply based on cooking time; there is some sort of measurement going on that assures properly cooked rice.
– The cooker can be programmed to start cooking while you are away, so that the rice (or other food) will be ready when you want to eat it.
– The cooker automatically goes into a ‘keep warm’ mode once cooking is done, and will work well in this regard for at least a few hours.

This cooker includes the following:

– Cooker itself (included the digital controller and the heating element)
– Teflon coated (non-stick) rice cooker pot
– Plastic vegetable steamer/food cooker tray
– Plastic stirring spatula (used once rice is cooked)
– Clear plastic measuring cup (1 cup capacity)
– Users manual
– Quick start guide
– Rice recipes

Basic rice cooking goes like this:

– Measure uncooked rice, using included cup or any other measuring cup
– Pour rice into pot
– If cooking white rice, pour in some water, stir with included spatula (or wooden spoon, etc), drain water (this optional step helps rinse away excess starch)
– Add water to pot (which already contains rice) until water level reaches measuring mark on inside of pot that corresponds with amount of rice
– Close cooker lid
– Press POWER button
– Press either the WHITE RICE or BROWN RICE button
– Cooking starts, and is monitored by the digital controller; display shows rotating LED pattern, ‘Cooking’ LED illuminates
– When digital controller estimates that about 12 minutes remain, display stops rotating pattern and starts showing count down minutes until done
– Cooker beeps loudly for a few seconds, automatically enters KEEP WARM mode, ‘Keep Warm’ LED illuminates
– When ready to eat, press POWER button twice to turn cooker off, open lid and remove pot
– Stir cooked in pot using included spatula (or wooden spoon, etc)

The manual includes a chart for estimating cooking time, but in general white rice takes 20-30 minutes, and brown rice takes twice that time.

I have done small and large batches of both white rice, brown rice, and also a batch of wild rice, and all came out perfectly, properly cooked but not mushy. White rice had a nice level of stickiness of the sort that lends itself to eating with chopsticks, but without being TOO sticky, so you can easily break it up by stirring more with the spatula.

In my tests, I always used the recommended water amount (i.e. I filled the pot to the measurement line that matched the amount of uncooked rice I put in), EXCEPT for the wild rice; the cooker does not have a setting for wild rice, so I followed the instructions on the rice bag, putting in 1-3/4 cup of water for each cup of uncooked rice, and then using the BROWN RICE mode on the cooker.

I have not used the optional vegetable steamer/food cooker tray, so I cannot comment on that very much. But the manual includes extra steps for setting up cooking in the tray only (i.e. no rice cooking), as well as simultaneous cooking of rice and other foods. There are ways to specify time values that apply to the foods in the optional tray, so the cooker is not going only on its normal method for rice-only cooking.

Besides using the product for cooking rice, and other things in the optional tray, it can be used as a sort of ‘crock pot’ for heating soups, chili, stews, etc. In this case, you just put the food to be heated into the pot directly and select the WHITE RICE mode. The food will be heated and then the cooker will keep it warm until you are ready to eat it. I tested this using a can of chili, and it worked well. This use of the cooker is mostly useful if you want to program it to start cooking while you are away, with cooking completed soon before you ARE ready to eat, OR to keep the food warm if you are uncertain about when you will be ready to eat.

The pot is easy to clean. Since neither water or food are ever put into the body of the cooker, there should rarely be any need to clean it, other than wiping the inside of the lid in case any food splashed up onto it during cooking.

The quality of this product seems very good. Nothing feels cheap. My only quibbles are that the power cord is quite short (obviously intended for use on a counter top, whereas I prefer to use it on a table that is further from the nearest outlet), and the ‘control panel’ area is quite reflective, and sometimes I have to view from different angles in order to read the buttons and/or the display and other LEDs.

Buyer beware; if you are from Canada and your item needs a replacement part, etc, you will have to pay outrageous shipping costs (eg. $40 for an $8 piece) to get it from the USA. This company doesn’t care about its Canadian buyers.
Another important thing to note is that the item says it’s dishwasher safe, yet if you place it into the dishwasher, it becomes scratched up and discoloured. This happened to us the very first time we purchased this and placed the inner pot into the dishwasher, even before using it as we clean everything first.

In terms of ease of use, the instructions are complicated and the flavour seems to just sit at the bottom of the pot no matter what.

The steam tray is very short so it can’t hold much. And the veggies (frozen) get mushy when used on the regular white rice setting.

Overallz it cooks rice fine, but the fact that if you have an issue the company will make you pay ridiculous costs to fix it, I say pass and buy from a different brand and save yourself the headache.

A few years ago I bought a Black & Decker rice cooker. I had the dream that I would be able to simply throw the rice in, and let it cook unattended as my Asian friends do with their rice cookers. That proved to be impossible with that unit: Even though the cooking vessel is teflon, after cooking rice in it, a thick cake of rice is always glued to the bottom. And I mean GLUED. Even if I coat the bottom with cooking oil prior to use. That product also requires constant attention when cooking, because it vents sticky rice-steam through the entire cooking cycle, and you have to make sure it doesn’t condense a rice-glue compound on anything near it. So I decided to buy a “better” rice cooker – this rice cooker – which was recommended by a friend:

The first time I used this Aroma Housewares rice cooker, the rice came out almost entirely hard and uncooked. When I discovered this, I simply pressed the button and ran the same rice through a 2nd cooking cycle. I wrote the incident off to something being unusual about the first time the unit was used. I confabulated that maybe something in the manufacturing process left the thermostat sensor or switch in an unusual state. But after I slept on it, I realized that I could have an intermittent unit.

I don’t eat rice every day. After 4 successful cycles of cooking rice, the original problem happened again; I wound up with hard uncooked rice. Again. So it became clear the unit had to be returned. By this time 28 days had passed. And it was a weekend. I had only a one-day window to return the unit before the 30-day return time-limit expired, and while the Amazon drop-off location was scheduled to be open. I felt the stress of having to get up extra early to make an extra stop before reporting to work. But I did it, and they replaced the unit. I have used the 2nd unit 4 times now, and it cooked the rice perfectly every time, so apparently the 1st unit I received was bad. And its failure was not detected by the company’s post-production quality-control procedures. Coincidentally, there seemed to be evidence that the box containing the first unit had been opened before I received it. Moreso after I received the 2nd unit, and was able to compare the state of the contents of its container with that of the 1st. Everything in the box for the 2nd unit seemed to be carefully located within the detents in the foam shipping material as one would expect – even though the 2nd product’s display box was shipped NAKED WITHOUT ANY SHIPPING BOX surrounding and protecting it. The cellophane wrapping of the display box was nearly entirely destroyed, the thin cardboard of the display box was crushed in places, and it had had a couple of small holes punched through the brightly-printed slick thin cardboard of which it was constructed. The holes were apparently punched through the display box during shipping. The cellophane was destroyed in a way that it appeared to be impossible to actually open the box without tearing away more of the outer cellophane wrapping, so I don’t think the 2nd unit was an “opened box” unit. I was, and still am, nonplussed that the unit was shipped devoid of any shipping container, with the result of the product’s container being damaged. I was shocked when I opened the Amazon Hub locker, and found myself face-to-face with a brightly colored, slightly damaged, display box like you would see on display on the shelf of a brick-and-mortar store.

But the unit which was inside seems to work properly, and I wanted to avoid the inconvenience of yet another return. I reasoned that with the apparent lack of quality control evidenced by the first failure, odds were that if I insisted on a unit whose container had not been damaged in shipping, the (it would be the 3rd) rice cooker inside had a high probability of functioning improperly. So I stuck with the 2nd unit which seems to be working properly.

But all is not well: It turns out that there is an “extra” thin aluminum disk which snaps onto a tiny shaft in the lid of the cooker. It is not clear to me what the function of this disk is, but it is close-by and exposed to the rice while it is cooking; it collects a film of “rice glue” every time you use the cooker; and it must be cleaned after every use. The problem is that this part (as well as the inside lining of the lid, itself) is fabricated from aluminum so thin that it is reminiscent of aluminum foil. Every time this disk-shaped part must be “unsnapped” for cleaning from the post which holds it, and “resnapped into place” afterward is fraught with peril. The chance that I will eventually bend this part – even though I handle it with extreme care – is high. Furthermore, although they differ, there is no obvious way to tell which is the top and which is the bottom of this part. You can easily assemble it wrong. The thin aluminum disk looks like it is part of the seal which keeps the cooker from spewing steam around the edge of the lid when it is closed. But it is NOT. It fits entirely inside the top lip of the cooking vessel. My strong recommendation to anyone who buys one of these is to carefully memorize (or mark with a permanent marker) which is the top, and which is the bottom of this disk when you initially unbox the item. Otherwise, after you unsnap this part from the lid, you won’t be able to tell. Luckily I was smart enough to know this when I opened the replacement unit. (Initially I had to call the friend who originally recommended this cooker to me to find out…and she isn’t too sure which way is up. At least she told me that she hasn’t bent this thin delicate piece. Yet. So there is hope that it may survive a while.) To further complicate this poor design, there is a rubber ring which surrounds this problem disk. It serves as a rubber-ring seal when the lid is closed. The inside diameter of this rubber seal is slightly smaller than the uber-delicate disk. It is impossible to tell whether this seal is supposed to go “in front of” or “behind” the problematic “aluminum-foil” disk. I didn’t know to examine this configuration carefully in the 1st unit before I used it. In the 2nd (replacement) unit, the cooker arrived (apparently from the factory) with the rubber ring stretched like a rubber-band, with half of it in front of the delicate disk, and the other half behind. (Really! What are the odds???)

So buyer beware! If you are very good at treating delicate mechanical things gingerly, you may prevent this thin disk part from being damaged for a while. In any case, it is unclear what its function is. Perhaps it was added to the design as an afterthought to help “break-up” the flow of steam from the internal rice-cooking vessel through the pressure vent port in the lid. I don’t know. But I have had enough of attempting to buy a functional rice-cooker online. If you live anywhere populated enough to have an Asian grocery within a convenient distance, my advice is to go buy a rice cooker there. You may pay a few dollars more, but you can inspect it to make sure that there are no “hidden features” which prevent the convenient use of the rice-cooker. After 3 iterations of failing to buy a practicable unit online, I would have saved a fair amount of money by buying one locally. Please feel free to profit from my misfortune.

BEWARE! This steamer has an American flat two pin plug for 110v.
When printing out the invoice and return address label…it has the return address as WEST PALM BEACH, FLORIDA, USA. You have to pay the postage!
The invoice shows it was ‘sold’ in the UK by….MAVI ZIRAI ILAC TARIM GUBRE GIDA ITHALAT IHRACAT, GB
What does that gibberish mean??