I need to find one to post to my Amazon wish list ASAP to help my poor husband know what to get me for Christmas!
Am looking for a reliable, durable rice cooker to replace my old cheap Aroma cooker, which has served us well for over a decade, but also got mad and burned the rice if we didn’t shut it off immediately. I’ve looked through the old threads here, but see no 2020 recs. And I’ve read so many Amazon reviews my eyes are bleeding (“Buy a Zojirushi, but not if it’s made in China!” “Buy a Tiger.” “No, don’t, it will stop working in 3 months.”)
We had a Zojirushi that we used daily for 15 years, and we finally upgraded to another Zojirushi (it was still working but we’d worn through the “start” button and had to use a chopstick to reach the internal start). We use it for rice but also for oatmeal most mornings, on a timer. It’s great to set it the night before and wake up to perfect slow-cooked oatmeal. We’ve been using the Zojirushi NP-HCC10XH for a year and a half now and it works great with no issues. They seem like workhorses to me.
Maybe not what you want, but I cook rice in our instant pot. It is so multi-purpose (but takes up more space than a rice cooker). It can be used as crock pot, boil eggs, cook beans, rice and all sorts of other things eliminating the need for a rice cooker, steamer, crock pot etc.
Another vote here for the Instant Pot. It is such a versatile machine that I donated both my rice cooker and crockpot, neither of which were dishwasher safe) shortly after getting one.
When we made our list of requested gifts for our wedding 36 years ago, the only thing I (as groom) put on the list was a rice maker. I had a close friend in grad school who was Japanese American and was so impressed that the rice from his rice maker was perfect every time. I don’t remember what brand we got, but it actually lasted 25 years. 11 years ago, I went on Amazon and replaced it with a Zojirushi, which has been even better – handles brown rice and wild rice incredibly well. It looks like this one (https://smile.amazon.com/stores/page/A51E0486-B6D0-466D-951E-2A6D22ED9713?ingress=2&visitId=c74eb18a-4323-4443-89c3-f9bd37bbfc62&ref_=ast_bln&productGridPageIndex=2). I don’t know where it was made but we have had no problems.
I also use my ipot. Actually that’s the reason I bought an ipot years ago before it was popular. A lot of my friends had rice cookers with the non stick inner pots and I had observed that they were all scratched with missing pieces of the non stick coating. I did not want the coating to end up in my rice so the quest to get a rice cooker with ss inner pot lead me to the ipot. There are now more cookers that have ss inner pots and I also hope the non stick ones are of better quality that they used to be.
I recently bought a Zojirushi fuzzy logic micom rice cooker so I could cook brown rice properly, but it takes 1hr 40 minutes to cook. My 20 years old Panasonic non smart rice cooker only takes 30 minutes but the brown nice is less fluffy. If I plan ahead I use the Zojirushi but usually I just use the Panasonic. One feature to look for is the automatic warmer with automatic off.
Me too. I think it actually predates my 25 year marriage. My mother never used one so I never knew they existed until I met dh. The Aroma we have is from his single days.
Like @shawbridge we got a rice cooker the first year we were married from one of DHs siblings. At the time, I laughed…but we have been using it for almost 40 years (knock on wood…don’t want to jinx it).
It’s a Hitachi Chime O Matic (quite sure they don’t make this anymore). Makes perfect rice every time. We use it at least once a week. If it dies, I will try my instant pot, but if I don’t like that, I’ll get another rice cooker quite quickly.
We have two Zojirushi rice cookers—always perfect rice. One has max of 5 cups and the other max of 10. I believe both were from Costco years ago. We use the larger for parties and smaller for every day. Folks in our family are very picky about their rice and this keeps them all happy. D even like the programmable feature, which she has used.
We bought a Zojirushi rice cooker a decade ago. We’ve given several as gifts in the past five years, and bought one for ourselves as well. I don’t recall the model names/numbers, but know that I made sure they were all made in Japan and not China, which has been an issue for us for years.
We rarely make rice these days since H has to watch his carb intake, but I plan to try making steel cut oatmeal with the rice cooker this winter.
Zojirushi also makes a water boiler/warmer in Japan that our kids requested for a previous Christmas. H resisted getting one for himself (he’s very frugal) so I bought one for him as a present and he loves it. He uses an AeroPress for coffee (which I don’t drink) and loves having the perfect temperature water ready and waiting for him.