I finally found a replacement rice cooker for my 28+ year old rice cooker, which I’ve had since I graduated college in 1998. My rice cooker was a hand-me-down from a Japanese student who graduated the year before me. She did not need it as she was looking to relocate somewhere in the East to setup her clay studio and continue her work. She had an open house and gave away a lot of her possessions to everyone who came to wish her well.
I ended up with her rice cooker because she heard I was having trouble finding one I could afford on my student employment income. At that time her’s was 4 years old so that rice cooker has worked for over 28 years before finally starting to fail.
These past 6 months I started looking for a replacement but just did not find any that sounded good enough for me to pay the high prices that were being offered. If they were within my price range the cookers were crappy so I chose to just wait. Then the other day I saw this advertised as being one of the best and it was on sale at Amazon.
I am a real cheapskate… I just cook mine the 5-10-15 minute way in a pot. I learned it from my old Rose Cheng Chinese Cookery cookbook I bought in the 1980’s.
And rice is not the only thing it can cook well. Someone wrote that they use it for their steel cut oatmeal breakfast every day too. So definitely a winner in my book, since I eat steel cut oatmeal for breakfast most days.
@ProvokeMe, I did look into that one because my old rice cooker make was an Aroma so that is what I initially thought about going to based upon my own use of their product. However, after several hours of research I changed my mind. Too many companies seem to have good and bad iterations of their product, with way too many not making improvements to fix the problems reported.
Granted many of the reviews were between 2017 and 2020, however, I still decided the on the Zojirshi product due to the outstanding recommendations it has received. But I certainly hope you got a better iteration of that product where the company improved their product from the reported issues I found.
So far I had one that lasted about 10 years before it gave up the ghost. I probably used it 2 or 3 times a week. My replacement was problematic. It would frequently sound off it was done when it wasn’t even close. I dropped it off at a local store that took Amazon returns and got another that looks like it’s going to last another 10 years.
The new one has another mode or two that my original didn’t have. They also seemed to have upgraded the interior pot. It seems a good bit more durable (thicker non stick surface) than the original. Does a great job through.
I just couldn’t see spending 150 bucks on something I can do with a simple saucepan and a lid. But that’s just me being frugal.
It’s like most things: You can spend a bundle, but you certainly don’t need to. I’ve been using cheap models all my life and they work fine. Cheap being $35-40. They last freakin’ forever, IME.
I tried cooking rice in an Instant Pot (first try). By the time I was through, the rice wasn’t quite done, so I threw the rice into my saucepan with a bit of water to finish cooking it. Lol. I ended up with more dishes to clean than expected.
I’ve tried 4 different things in the Instant pot with no luck. One dish was edible, two were throw away, and the rice was rescued. I’m gonna stick to old fashioned cooking.
Ya, I wouldn’t use my Instant Pot for rice either, but I had a rice cooker which made my life so easy when I had all burners on the stove in use when I wanted to cook rice on the side too…so it worked using my separate rice cooker.
The best part about having it when I got it was that I was sharing a house with two other students and never had full access to the stove all the time, so having the separate appliance to cook my rice made it really helpful. I found having that separate appliance so handy going forward too that I never changed until it started failing. That is why I searched and found a replacement.
I have had good success pressure cooking roasts and beans in my Instant Pot. But for large roasts I still prefer slow cooking in my Le Creuset 8qt Dutch Oven my mother gave me long ago. No school like the old school. But Le Creuset is expensive, heavy and takes up space so I see why the Instant Pot has become popular.
I haven’t tried yogurt in the Instant Pot yet so I am curious about how that will go when i get around to it.
I don’t cook rice much but am very interested in this Chinese Cookery cookbook @juulz mentioned, so I ordered a used copy from the land of female warriors along with a used copy of Mexican Cookery by the same publisher from the same era.
Always appreciate the wonderful nuggets of knowledge and inspiration I get from OTGeegle.
