How long do you wait for your rice?

They prepare it in the galley so it is fresh for meal services.

fwiw .. I suspect that peoples' views of a zoji and of rice makers generally depends on what rice they eat most of. If it's Thai or Chinese or sticky rice then I think they can all be much of a muchness .... however pillau rice I find there's a real difference with the zoji and pretty much everything else I've tried or tasted. Mine is used 70% pillau and 30% everything else. I wouldn't swap it.

What is pillau rice? Isn't it a style of cooking?

We use our rice cooker mainly for Akita komachi and Koshi hikari varieties of Japonica rice. I'm sure those who are knowledgeable about Chinese and Thai cuisines are just as particular about the varieties of rice that they use, saying it's all much of a muchness seems rather silly.
And there are other techniques that those who understand their preferred rice varieties will employ. For us, rinsing the rice, allowing it to drain and then soaking it in decent water is pretty crucial when looking to get the best from it, particularly cooked plain without a broth.

Picking daft arguments with people is even more silly.:p

Our family cooks rice daily and our Aroma has been pretty much flawless going on 3 years now. We use thai hom mali rice which perhaps is pretty hard to screw up. After reading so much praise for the Zuji machine, I'm wondering what I'm missing out on?

What argument?

What IS pillau rice? You've been very specific about it.

There are Zuji rice cookers..
then there's the rest...

Really the difference between Zuji and other TOP cookers are noticeable...
between Zuji and other average cookers are night & day.

It's expensive so if you cook rice once a month, it's not worth it.
if you eat it every day practically like we do.. the amortized cost over say 5 years for a nice Zuji isn't that significant..

I've seen this small, portable rice cooker at the local Marukai Market (in Costa Mesa, CA): http://www.marukaiestore.com/p-713-p...-wattages.aspx

It seems like this would be fine for dorm or office. Travel use may be limited as it is specific to 120 volts usage. A Google search on "Marukai Takeru rice cooker" brings up several hits, including a YouTube video and a couple of postings by actual users.

Marukai's magazine this month shows it on special for $27.98: https://picasaweb.google.com/marukai...56998850732994. It's on the lower left part of the page. Marukai is a membership store ($10/year), but you can purchase a one day pass for $1.

I've read through this thread a few times and still can't quite get my head around multiple hundred dollar rice cookers. Growing up in a Chinese household we naturally ate more rice than one would think reasonable and that continues to this day in my house. We never had a fancy rice cooker and they always served the trick and lasted years, I know my father still has the same black and decker one he's had for more than 10 years. We've got a b & d one also and it goes strong week in and week out for 3 years and counting.

I bought this Zoji rice cooker several years ago and love it. http://www.amazon.com/Zojirushi-NS-X...hi+rice+cooker

It is a smaller unit and works very well for a couple. Made in Japan. Stipulate you want the one Made in Japan!

I have more trust in it than one made in China.

Not good for brown rice.

You know, for a long time, this was exactly how I thought. We had a cheap rice cooker(one of the white ones with the glass lid) for my entire childhood and it always seemed great. However, after having rice out of a fancy Zojirushi cooker, I have to say, I was impressed enough to go get one. Completely worth it.

What kind of brown rice are you trying to make with it?

Our rice cooker is fine with the Japanese varieties (as well as some of the rice sold as round grains grown in Spain or Italy - the Calasparra Balilla X Solana from Murcia is our preferred kind for making Japanese style brown rice), but we do soak the grain for at least 5 hours first... most of the time.

Brown basmati is completely different and if you use the same quantities of water the machine recommends for brown rice with the basmati it turns into mush. I'm much less knowledgeable about the finer points of basmati but I find that, when using the brown kind, soaking for at least half an hour and then cooking it with the white rice water volume and cooker setting seems to do the trick. Brown basmati rice and white basmati rice don't seem to need as much of a variance in water quantity as the white and brown round grain varieties do.

Having grown up in a culture which uses long grain rice and strives for "every grain separate unto itself", I'm never really at home with some of the short grain and Asian rices, no matter the method and vehicle of prep.

The whole thread caused me to recall the Hmung sailors, a coffee can and a charcoal brazier on the fantail. Good rice every time, even with cumshawed US Navy stores long grain rice,.although occasionally flavored by the river's waters,