Zojirushi NHS-06 3-Cup (Uncooked) Rice Cooker, White (-WB)

This is a decent way to cook small amounts of rice without needing to use a burner on the stove. Just be sure to follow the directions, especially the part about rinsing your rice beforehand. I had never done that before, so the first time I just used my standard recipe for cooking rice, and it didn’t work very well with this cooker. However, after following the included directions, it worked much better the second time. Even when following their included directions perfectly, there is still some rice that is stubborn on the bottom when it finishes, and some residue that needs a bit of light scrubbing with a soft sponge to come off. But overall, the rice comes out great, and this is much easier to clean than any of the steel pots I would normally use for this purpose. The manual also has directions for a few other foods, but I haven’t tried it for anything besides rice.

I love this rice cooker. I was looking for some thing that one button, turn it off, turn it on. I do not need steam functions. I do not need vegetable cooking. I do not need any of this crap. I just needed some thing that made really good rice. I love this little guy. My rice always comes out perfect and it makes exactly enough for 3 people.

I decided to buy this because I really suck at making brown rice. White rice, any variety, I’m a champ. But I decided I wanted to get more fiber and eat healthier and thought eating more brown rice sounded like a good idea, but cooking it on the stove, I’ve had mixed luck. When you’re cooking something for almost an hour on the stove, there are a lot of variables that can mess up your “cook this for X minutes” recipe.

I bought this because I wanted something small and relatively inexpensive and importantly, foolproof. I did some research on how rice cookers work. Basically, they boil at water at 100 C/212 F and then wait for the water to evaporate enough to get past that temperature. Once it’s just barely past boiling (which it won’t get until enough of the water is absorbed/evaporated), then the rice, in theory, should be done.

The first batch of white rice I made, I did the exact measurements in the manual for 1 cup of dry rice. I used Jasmine. It was honestly perfect. Better than any stove rice I’ve managed to make, which surprised me, because I thought white rice on the stove was pretty easy/foolproof.

Today, I decided to try brown rice. Since it’s not just a trial run, I’m actually making food for my family, I decided to do 2 cups of brown rice, and the water the booklet called for (0.4 L, I think the instructions said). Because the book didn’t do a great job of explaining whether you put the water in up to the level on the bowl first, I went and looked at the Zojirushi website where it said to put the water in, then the rinsed rice. So I did just that. Everything looked good and I turned the machine on. After about 10 minutes, so much water and steam started coming out of the machine, I had to put a paper towel on top so that my counter wouldn’t get all covered in water. When that got soaked after a couple of minutes, I did another. When that got soaked, I had to pull out a shamwow style of towel and a sponge to catch any overflow. (Picture shown after I pulled the towel off so you can see the steam/water coming out). After about 10 minutes of that, the water boiling subsided to just enough that the towel and sponge were no longer needed.

Hoping the rice is worth the trouble! In the future, if you eat more than a few servings of rice in your family, you might want to get a slightly larger rice cooker. Since it’s just me, my husband, and my son, we really don’t need the full two dry cups (to whatever cooked amount that creates…6 cups?), so I think we’ll be fine just doing the one dry cup. Hopefully this helps someone!

Look, I can make a pretty good batch of rice on the stove, or in the multi-pot, but this little unit does the job with perfection and absolutely no effort besides measuring and washing the rice and adding the water. This particular model is also quite small, which means you can easily find counter space for it.

Sometimes a piece of equipment that does one thing, really well, with no attention or fuss required, cheaply, in a compact space is a great addition to even the best equipped kitchen, this is one of those times.

This has been a good rice cooker when I don’t want to bust out the big 10 cup model. Consistent quality in the rice and easy to clean means I can’t complain.