Why Use A Rice Cooker? An Essential For Any Rice Lover

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The Old Way Versus The Right Way

The oldest and most universally well known method of cooking rice is cooking it in a pot on a heat source such as a hob or similar. The rice is cooked by boiling the water with very little heat control It has to be carefully watehed when cooking to prevent spilling, overcooking, drying out etc. When simplyg boiling rice in a pot at a very high temperature it is very difficult to produce rice with the perfect texture, taste and aroma.

To achieve perfect rice, various types of heat needs to be applied to it at specific stages. Rather than simply boiling the rice, it needs to be steamed, braised, boiled, rested and much more. The old Japanese way of Kamado style rice cooking could achieve this but it required constant manual monitoring and a lot of expertise. 

Fortunately, modern rice cookers have been developed to take the tedium out of the rice perfecting process. Older rice cookers which simply boiled the rice are increasingly being replace by modern rice cookers with fuzzy logic technology. These modern rice cookers have enabled rice cooking to be elevated and cooked correctly. They require very little effort too!

So now we will look in detail at the various reasons why, if you like rice, you should consider buying a premium modern rice cooker.

Time Saving

Using a modern rice cooker means all you have to do is put the rice and water in the bowl, press the function for the rice type you are cooking and press the start button. It really is as simple as that!

A good modern rice cooker will also have a preset / timer function so you can set the time in advance as to when you want the rice to be ready. This means even more time saving!

Whilst the cooker does it’s thing, this means you have more time to focus on cooking other parts of your meal. The cooker will probably countdown the time and tell you how much longer is left before the rice is cooked. It will do all the thinking for you so you have more time to focus on other parts of preparing your meal etc.

Once done, the rice cooker will beep to inform you it’s ready and automatically turn off the cooking and switch to keep warm (for up to 24 hours) so that your rice is at the optimal temperature for when you are ready to serve.

Perfect Timing

An essential part of a good rice cooker is it’s ability to let you know accurately when the cooking will be finished. They do this by counting down the time remaining and then informing you of the end of cooking using a beep.

Click here for more information about displays and countdowns

The Yum Factor

Yum Asia rice cookers have unique cooking profiles and technology that makes them stand out from the rice cooker crowd. Starting from the materials we use to carefully developered UMAI Induction Heating to our Yumami, GABA and YumCarb functions which gives them the Yum Factor.

Click here for more information about the Yum Factor

Rice Cooked Correctly

A modern rice cooker uses fuzzy logic technology at a bare minimum. Fuzzy logic cooking technology hugely improves the qualtity of cooked rice. Instead of just boiling rice which destroys the texture and overly extracts the flavour and nutrients of it, the fuzzy logic cooks the rice to perfection.

Modern rice cookers have several sensors which detect the amount of water in the bowl, the ambient temperatures, the rice being cooked and much more to determine what kind of heat needs to be applied and for how long to give perfect results. The process then calculates weight, content type, water volume, internal temperatures along with pre-programmed conditions to cook perfect rice time after time.

These phases can be preheat, absorb water, heating, boiling, steam, cool down, agitation, heat burst and keep warm with steam which are each calculated for time and temperature using Yum Asia’s unique cooking profiles.

The number of cooking phases differs between grain types but usually there is between 7 and 15 cooking phases. They are optimised for rice cooking so that each and every grain has the optimal texture, aroma and flavour depending on the rice type being cooked.

No Mess / Easy Cleaning

One of the main reasons why we started Yum Asia was that we were tired with wobbly glass lid rice cookers spitting starch rice water over our countertops and making a horrible mess. Either that or trying to get cooked starchy rice off a saucepan is often like trying to get glue off.

Rice cookers are extremely easy to clean. The materials of a good rice cooker are designed to resist rice sticking and make it easier to clean than a saucepan.

The rice cooker inner bowls usually have a good quality (healthy) non-stick layer. Normally all that is needed to clean the inner bowl is a wipe with a damp cloth.

Other food contact parts of the rice cooker such as the inner lid are usually removable so you can easily clean them. 

As modern rice cookers are sealed units there is no bubbling over or overspill of starchy water  This means no dirty worktops, no scrubbing or lengthy cleaning needed and a cleaner approach to cooking rice and more.

Safe Materials That Don’t Need Scrubbing

The food contact materials of a rice cooker are specifically designed to be resistant to the stickiness or rice starch and rice. This means you don’t need to use a dishwasher to clean up. Our rice cookers are heallthier using ceramic coated bowls and stainless steel inner lids so no nasty chemicals. 

Click here for more information about our food contact materials.

Allow Us To Guide You

We are here to help you learn how to use your rice cooker to maximum effectiveness. Our user manuals detail how to cook more than rice but we also have more information on our website.

Click here for more information about slow cooking and steaming.

Steaming And More

Many rice cookers have a steam tray which sits in the inner bowl above the rice. This enables food to be steamed at the same time as cooking rice. This steaming action can cook vegetables, dumplings and even proteins. 

In addition to a steam function, some rice cookers can also slow cook, bake cakes, make soups, porridge and other grains too such as quinoa, bulgur etc. These functions work particularly well in a rice cooker due to the way a rice cooker heats food in a sealed unit. There are also many one pot rice recipes on our greedy panda food blog where you simply put all the ingredients into the inner bowl, press start and the cooker will do all the work for you.

A rice cooker can be much more than you may realise and can actually help reduce the number of kitchen appliances you need. 

Energy And Money Efficient

Not only does a rice cooker make your cooking time more efficient, they also (on average) consume only half the energy that cooking in a saucepan on a stove would use.

This means big energy savings which is better for the environment and puts money back in your pocket. Good rice cookers usually have very good thermal insulation and as they are sealed units there is very little hot loss. With Induction Heating (IH) rice cookers the efficiency is further increased as the heat is applied directly to the inner bowl and content sonly rather than the whole heating chamber. 

As we touched upon earlier, a rice cooker does more than simply cooking rice. This means you can combine a slow cooker, steamer and rice cooker into one appliance. 

Forget having to pay high prices for restaurant quality rice when you can make better than restauarant quality rice at the touch of a button. Making rice at home rather than ordering in can save you big money.

Designed To Reduce Energy Use

Every aspect of our rice cookers are designed to use as little energy as possible. They are thermally insualted so very littl heat is lost. This means that the heating power has to be applied less to the contents to cook them.

Click here for more detailed information on our products energy use.

Grow, Learn And Enjoy The Journey

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