I really like my rice cooker. It cooks quickly and expertly and holds my rice, warm and all set to take in, for days. At dwelling, we just about generally have a pot all set on the counter all set to provide with evening meal or to fortify a lunchtime salad. The rice is great, and the cooking procedure rivals toast-producing in its simplicity. Soon after my spouse Elisabeth and I got ours—a Zojirushi NS-LAC05—nearly a ten years back, I have by no means witnessed the stage of any other method. In truth, if it ever dies, I would be one hundred p.c joyful to swap it with the actual similar product.
And but … with the launch of Zojirushi’s new, leading-of-the line Force Induction Heating Rice Cooker & Hotter, aka the NP-NWC10—quite a mouthful possibly way—I was amazingly curious. It offers two functions that make cookery nerds’ hair stand on stop with enjoyment: induction warmth and tension cooking. In shorter, induction is speedy and specific, and pressure’s bigger warmth is purported to more completely and evenly cook dinner every grain.
The new a single operates just about identically to the product I possess. Utilizing the cup it will come with, you measure out the total of rice you want into the pot, rinse the grains, then add h2o up to the etched line on the sidewall of the pot that corresponds with the number of cups of rice you might be cooking. Pick out the setting you want, strike the Cooking button, and clap together as it performs a couple bars of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Minimal Star.”
This is where by the variance kicks in. As a substitute of plateauing at 212 levels Fahrenheit with no tension, white rice is cooked at 2.1 psi and 219 levels. Brown rice will get a tiny more tension (2.8 psi) and reaches 221 levels.
I also had a large realization right here: the first take a look at would be the offer breaker. It would possibly flavor superior or it wouldn’t be truly worth it, primarily thinking about the Zojirushi will established you back again handily The proposed retail price for the five.five-cup product I tested is $585, and the 10-cup NP-NWC-18 is $620, nevertheless the two can be discovered a little bit more cost-effective in suppliers.
For my take a look at, I ordered a fifteen-pound bag of Tamanishiki Tremendous Top quality Brief Grain Rice, the similar rice used by Zojirushi for its white-rice tests in the United States. I set equivalent quantities of rice in my previous and the new devices, rinsed, included h2o, and strike Cooking. About 50 minutes later on, I fluffed the rice, grabbed some spoons and named Elisabeth. We every gave the other blind checks from every cooker, shaped an feeling, and kept it to ourselves until finally we would the two tried out every a single. The variance was clear. Whilst our previous equipment developed rice that would be more than acceptable at a cafe, the induction tension product created more unique grains—”considerably less mushy” was our shared assessment. It was a clear move ahead, and there were being even “softer” and “harder” settings for even more tinkering.
Grace Underneath Force
One argument that now crops up when it will come to all rice cookers is, Why not just cook dinner your rice in a tension cooker? It’s a fantastic dilemma. In observe, I am a devout proponent of the division of labor, allowing every equipment do its issue. As well as, on a useful side, there’s so much things you can cook dinner in the tension cooker that you want to take in with rice that, at the minimum, you would want two independent units.
The head-to-head take a look at punched a several holes in my argument. Utilizing my tremendous-high quality rice, I cooked clean batch in my Prompt Pot employing Melissa Clark’s rules from her cookbook Supper in an Prompt. It arrived out rather very well on my first go, with obviously unique grains and just a hint of mushiness, one thing that might be in a position to be dialed out with more tests. In the Zojirushi, the grains were being just a bit more unique, but the variance was astonishingly slim thinking about that you can obtain an great electric powered tension cooker for about $one hundred and the Zojirushi expenditures more than five instances that total. Then again, tension-cooking rice often is a bit fussier and won’t save you much time.
Even so, the rice cooker’s “Keep warm” perform is notably superior. I left the two concluded batches of rice in their respective devices right away. In the morning, the Zojirushi’s batch was around indistinguishable from just cooked, whilst the Prompt Pot’s had a 50 %-inch thick crust of inedible rice crud on the bottom of the pot. I comprehend that the good quality of the rice degrades more than time even in a fantastic rice cooker, but as someone who routinely maxes out my previous Zojirushi’s timer at ninety nine hrs so I can just about generally have a several scoops of warm rice on hand, this is huge. On a comparable notice, numerous individuals really like employing the timer perform to make just-cooked rice look at dinnertime.