The Best Rice Cookers of 2024

The rice cookers I tested fell into three loose categories: small, affordable devices, midrange multicookers and specialty, high-end cookers.

Every mini rice cooker I tested, including the Imusa 3-cup, i Dash mini 2-cup rice cookeronce Black & Decker 3-cup The rice cooker provided a decent, small serving of white rice, although the Dash took an agonizing 35 minutes to cook just one cup of white rice. They all struggled with brown rice and mixed rice.

Slightly larger than 6 cups Oster (our budget choice) and Of course the rice makers performed about the same, making pots of white rice in 19 and 20 minutes respectively and brown rice in a very good — or perhaps slightly less — speedy 22 minutes. I would happily recommend either as a solid rice saving recipe. Although the Zojirushi seems a little stronger, it’s more than twice the price of the Oster, giving the Oster our final nod.

$50 8-cup Hamilton Beach rice cooker (Currently Out of Stock) seemed to be a good price for the size, but the rice was inconsistent, with very undercooked, dry portions of rice. Zojirushi option for 3 cups it also disappoints with rice that was too wet and slightly broken, losing the distinction of well-cooked white rice.

Cuisinart 4 cup and Black and Decker’s 7-cup rice cookers were some of our least favorite because they were both messy. The Cuisinart boiled over every time I used this conventional rice cooker and the larger Black and Decker model leaked onto the counter, requiring significant cleaning.

When it comes to midrange multicookers, I found that the cooking time was slow and the results were a little short. Aroma rice cooker with 8 cups and food steamer, Instant Pot’s Zest cooker and a 5 cups Panasonic pleased us with the various activities available at their meeting points, but all three produced well-cooked, low-salt rice, possibly due to slow cooking. I also tested Cusinart’s large Rice Plus Multi-Cooker and although it can hold a lot of rice and produced decent batches of white and brown rice, cooking the rice took longer than any other machine to do so at over an hour and a half for brown rice. .

If you find yourself cooking loads of different types of grains, one of these can be a viable option as it has many niche settings. With rice, there are better options available. You may also find that you get more value with a real multicooker that includes a pressure cooker function. I can direct you to CNET’s list of the best Instant Pots of 2024 for more on that.

Finally, high-end, special rice cookers appear Tiger again Of course both were impressive, as noted above. It is clear that these devices have been carefully measured; Zojirushi also offers a bit of customization for how you want your white rice cooked, which is great if you have people with different rice texture preferences living under the same roof.

A tiger is less than half the size of its counterpart and a very well-cooked rice; faster than any other. It may not have all the bells and whistles of the Zojirushi, which takes our top pick for custom rice, but it’s our overall top pick for 2024.