As soon as rice becomes wet it becomes more delicate, and some rice are simply more robust than others. You might need to adapt your rinsing technique to accommodate the rice you are using. I have recently just had to adapt my own technique as we got a 10kg bag of a European grown “koshihikari” style but which is less robust and softer than our preferred “Yumenishiki”.

My advice for rice that is particularly prone to breakage:

Use two hands to rinse and don’t grind it directly into the strainer. The video at the end of this post shows a way to do this, basically you keep some water in the bowl and separate the grains out between your hands/fingers allowing water to pass over the rice.

Work gently but quickly! Not only are you preventing the starch/bran molecules with their smell and remnants of heavy metals being re-absorbed by the rice by working quickly, you are lessening the chance of breakage.

If you’re gentle, having a plastic colander doesn’t necessarily have to be more effective than a metal one. Saying that, since it’s better to rinse rice within water if the rice is weak and brittle, you might be better off rinsing within a standard bowl and only using the mesh colander as an aid to stop grains from going down the sink at the points you drain the water.

- Note also that it can be difficult to source plastic strainers with a fine enough mesh. The only fine gauze plastic strainer I have is for a teapot. I’m currently using it to wash the tablespoon of millet I add to the two cups of the softer rice I’ve changed to. If you do find the right kind of mesh to suit you for rice in plastic, sure, go for it!


Did you click on the link to the discontinued model to see? They still have some accessories available even for models that are discontinued. You need to look at each individually to see if it’s still there.
For example, the NP-HBC10 is discontinued but the bowls can still be purchased https://www.zojirushi.com/app/spare_...rs/NP-HBC10/18