The Instant Pot definitely does not adjust while cooking based on sensors or anything like that. My Instant Pot Ultra does let you modify settings while it’s underway, but that’s manual and I’ve never had any reason to do so.
This, on the other hand, is definitely true of the Instant Pot.
Okay, but is it really enough of an improvement to drop $X and more importantly, fill up a good chunk of a cupboard or cart or whatever when I have multiple options to produce adequate rice already? That’s the part that I am skeptical of. For people with plenty of cash (honestly, probably me), and kitchen space (definitely not me), especially ones that are eating a lot of rice already, even a marginal improvement might be worth it. Especially since that’s something you can do while your Instant Pot or whatever is cooking something else. But for me? Ehhhh.
Also, FWIW, the stovetop recipe I’ve followed when I’ve made it that way (from How to Cook Everything Fast) involves sitting it on a burner and checking it after ten or twelve minutes to see if it’s done. It’s not exactly intensive.
The other good thing about the new fancy rice cookers is that you can switch types of rice easily and the fuzzy logic can take over to make sure the rice is cooked perfectly. Some of the newer ones will even vent off extra steam if you put too much water in.
I still use my multi-cooker for rice too, but I envy those who have a fancy dedicated rice cooker.
The keep warm thing is crazy useful to me. It’s the same rice whether you eat it immediately or wait another half or full hour. You can even set it up in the morning with a delay timer to have it start cooking said rice before you get home!
After our fuzzy logic based Panasonic rice cooker died, my wife decided she wanted one with a stainless steel pot. That limited our choices. We ended going rather old school with a Tatung rice cooker. It’s apparently a fixture in Taiwanese households. Unlike the other old school rice cookers, this uses an outer pot generate steam. I will admit I miss the convenience of being able to set a target time to finish cooking the rice. However it does good job putting out delicious rice.
Yeah, the keep warm feature is great, especially with variable schedules in the house. Ours is mainly for traditional white rice, about 2 cups several times a week. My wife has done coconut rice with kidney beans in it and it came out great, We also do a multi-grain/bean rice which comes out wonderfully. Porridge with white rice or the multi-grain/bean mix is also a staple.
My grandmother had a Tatung cooker like that one, with some kind of bizarre double-pot thing that I never understood. Fortunately, I was never called upon to make rice in her house.
It’s straightforward to use. Rice goes in the inner pot as measured by the rice scooper. Water added to the marking line for the amount added in (same as every type of rice cooker I’ve ever user used. You then measure in an amount of water marked on the rice scooper corresponding to the number scoops of rice you are cooking, That get poured in the outer post. Sit the inner pot into the outer pot, pot on, the lid, and turn on the rice cooker. The small mount of water in the outer post get turned to steam and helps steam cook the rice.
Okay as a follow up, how did 1 gou or gou-cup become the standard size? I had to wander down this path because the 5.5 sizes actually mean 5.5 x 180ml (3/4 US cup) so only just a tad over 4 cups in my normal measurement comparison.
One of those “cups” translates into about two bowls of rice when using the common bowl size for Chinese tableware (and I assume Japanese tableware too). It’s quite convenient for figuring out how much uncooked rice to use.
Zojirushi on the way. The GF and I were talking about a rice dish over the weekend and she mentioned we really need something better than what we have right now. I agreed.
I did notice since asking the question that the prices vary by a pretty large margin over short time periods. I nabbed it today during a low, or at least the lowest I’ve seen.
I have a cheap airfryer I picked up from a Black Friday sale for around $30. It does a decent job especially for the price but if I was going to drop a couple hundred, I would get a Breville convection oven instead without a doubt.
