The battle to invent the automatic rice cooker

Re:The battle to invent the automatic rice cooker by nosborn on Saturday August 01, 2020 @09:56AM (#24020443)

I was told by a rice cooker salesperson (in Asia) that Korean brands should be avoided if you plan to cook brown rice. Apparently brown rice isn’t eaten in Korea so the machines don’t have a brown rice setting.

I don’t know if the former is true but the latter seemed to be on the ones I saw.

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Re:The battle to invent the automatic rice cooker by kijin on Saturday August 01, 2020 @11:26AM (#24021159)

Korea here. Brown rice is fairly common, and every rice cooker I've seen (except the very cheapest) has a setting for brown and/or mixed rice.

If the salesperson wasn't lying, he was probably referring to other cultivars of rice, not just brown rice. For example, long grain rice obviously requires different settings than short grain rice. Southeast and South Asia have much more diversity of rice than Northeast Asia.

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Re:The battle to invent the automatic rice cooker by oehtXRwMkIs on Sunday August 02, 2020 @01:41AM (#24026627)

Funny cause I got a cuckoo based on an Amazon review that said it cooked the best brown rice. YMMV I guess.

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Re:The battle to invent the automatic rice cooker by cycrutchfield on Saturday August 01, 2020 @03:32PM (#24023219)

My Cuckoo definitely has a brown rice setting. It works pretty well fwiw

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Re:The battle to invent the automatic rice cooker by ffggvv on Saturday August 01, 2020 @10:18AM (#24020595)

i’m no rice expert but i really don’t think you need a special cooker for brown rice in my experience. just a different ratio of water to rice. it isn’t special

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Re:The battle to invent the automatic rice cooker by ginko on Saturday August 01, 2020 @10:33AM (#24020711)

Brown rice takes significantly longer to cook, so the rice cooker might not be programmed to do that.

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Re:The battle to invent the automatic rice cooker by MHordecki on Saturday August 01, 2020 @12:10PM (#24021532)

Why would the rice cooker need to be programmed for it, though? For any given quantity of rice, the two variables during cooking is the amount of water and the power of the heating element[1].

It is known that brown rice requires a different ratio of water, but this is something that can be replicated with any method. Does the special brown rice setting change the heat output of the rice cooker?

[1]: Fancy rice cookers use non-constant power, or so I've heard. Not sure how much it influences the taste, though.

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Re:The battle to invent the automatic rice cooker by brudgers on Saturday August 01, 2020 @10:52AM (#24020864)

With the simplest rice cookers, there's no programming. When the water is gone, it is gone.

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Re:The battle to invent the automatic rice cooker by ffggvv on Saturday August 01, 2020 @11:04AM (#24020971)

yep, i just add more water and the brown rice turns out fine. though i’m sure fancy 200 dollar zojirushi ones probably do it better, i’m happy with simplicity

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