Tom’s Reviews

Rice cookers are an unusual appliance in many US households, but I’ve had several Asian friends who had them and the rice always seemed to be fluffier and tastier than any rice I cooked on stovetop or in the microwave. Instant rice turns out the most comparable, but loses some flavor in all the processing. Slow cook rice tends to come out mushy in the microwave or to burn when cooked on stovetop. I’d looked at rice cookers before, but hadn’t purchased because we’re trying to follow some variation on the South Beach Diet and The G.I. Diet and rice doesn’t fit in. On the other hand, slow cook rice is preferred to instant on both diets and a rice cooker makes that much simpler (and tastier).

I bought my Salton RA3 3-Cup Rice Cooker at Amazon during a “one-day sale” event a couple of weeks ago. I’m glad I did and if I had it to do over, I’d have bought it before at the regular price (about $5 more than I paid). Of course, I bought it using Amazon Prime, so I paid zero for two-day shipping.

The rice cooker is easy to use and I found both use and cleanup comparable to microwave. You dump the appropriate measure of rice (measuring cup included) into the cooker, then add water to the appropriate fill line right on the bowl. Stick the bowl in the cooker, put on the lid and depress a lever. The cooker automatically shuts off once all the water steams out and, for the fluffiest rice, you wait 15 minutes after shutoff to remove the rice. The bowl is small and a quick soak in the sink loosens up the tiny amount of “rice crust” that forms on the bottom for a less than 1-minute cleanup time. Of course, the big recommendation for this convenience-wise is that it frees up the microwave and stovetop for other uses - very important when rice is a minor side dish in a multicourse feast prepared in a small kitchen.

This item has a lot to recommend it over larger appliances. It’s sufficient to make more than enough rice for our family of three, especially with the smaller rice portions preferred when watching the glycemic load of meals. For a larger family, a larger cooker might be useful.

If you want to make fried rice or if you aren’t serving rice with a meal, the rice cooker can also double as a vegetable steamer. Most fried rice recipes call for cook the rice 8+ hours ahead and refrigerating. In the meantime, you clean the rice cooker and are ready to use the steaming rack (included) to steam vegetables to go with the meal.

A minor plus is that this appliance saves energy. Cooking regular rice, in the microwave takes almost twice the electricity. The rice cooker is a 300-watt appliance and takes 35 minutes to cook basmati rice, for a total energy use of 10,500 watt/minutes (0.175 kw/hours). Cooking the same basmati rice in a 1200-watt microwave takes 10 minutes at full power followed by ten minutes at half power for a total of 18,000 watt/minutes (0.3 kw/hours). In a single use this amounts to about 1 cent saved, but if you could save 42% of every use of electricity think how far that could go to saving your pocketbook, contributing to energy independence and helping the environment.

Pro

• Low cost
• Compact for easy storage
• Compact size frees up counter space during use
• Produces small batches - great for small family or dieters
• Easy to use
• Quick cleanup
• Frees up the microwave/stove for other uses
• Doubles as a steamer

Con

• Batches may be too small for big families (Consider the 7-cup model)
• Very small portions when steaming veggies