I grew up with a standard, cheap rice cooker my mom bought at a grocery store.
Cooking rice is a pretty straightforward task, so whats with the super expensive cookers?
Heres what I found.
Cooking rice on the stove isnt exactly difficult, but I have screwed it up a few times.
Ive made it too mushy.
A rice cooker, on the other hand, cooks perfect rice every time.
All you do is add rice, measure water, and press start.
A basic rice cooker has a built-in thermostat that tracks the temperature of the pot.
Fuzzy logic rice cookers have fancy automatic technology that cooks your rice with a little more nuance.
Thefuzzy logic theorywas introduced by UC Berkeley professor Lotfi Zadeh in 1965.
It can also adjust the cooking for different kinds of rice.
The devices microchip adjusts the cooking times and temperatures accordingly.
There is a programmable melody or beep audio indicator to indicate when the cooking cycle has ended.
Its sort of like a cheap electric hand mixer versus a fancy stand mixer.
They both mix stuff, but the stand mixer will do a hell of a lot more.
Of course, there are varying levels of quality of stand mixers just like there are rice cookers.
Our own editor-in-chief, Alan Henry, owns one of these and stands by it.
The promises are real.
Nope, the machine is smarter than I am, and adjusts temperature accordingly and produces consistent rice.
Okay, but maybe I want to make congee or rice porridge or something.
Well, theres a button on the front for that.
If you have a family or you make big batches at once, you may want a medium.
Of course, it depends on your own individual needs, but these sizes are a basic guideline.
There are also brands to consider.
There are in-between options, too.
So double-check to adjust accordingly, or better yet, for traditional rice,use the first knuckle method.
