Does this only apply to Japanese rice cookers? I know the Korean brands, like Cuckoo, advertise the ability to cook brown rice and mult-grain rice as a selling point.

Also does anyone know where to buy replacement inner liners? I noticed that the nonstick coating in my Zojirushi has started to come off.

Most of the Japanese brands offer cookers that have functions to make brown rice. Unfortunately, if you do this regularly, the lining of your Cooking pot will degrade much faster than if you don’t. I guess they only need to guarantee that this degradation doesn’t happen within a set time frame for this to be acceptable for consumers.
Unless the pot lining is made of something exceptional - and if it were you would be paying a significant premium for it - the only way I know of (and can personally vouch for) conserving the pot lining is to stick to white rice. Or get a spare bowl for making anything else.

Each manufacturer sells spares and accessories, but it depends on the brand, model and territory. Here is the page for Zojirushi in the USA - https://www.zojirushi.com/app/spare_...y/rice-cookers
If a white rice only approach is too limiting, then check that a spare bowl is available at the time you initially choose your rice cooker and order it at the same time. Otherwise, don’t expect more than 2 or 3 years use out of it.
If you stick to white rice in a dedicated rice cooker, have a ceramic and/or cast iron stove top pot for rice mixed with other ingredients (perhaps some oil) and use a pressure cooker for brown rice, you should be able to use them all happily for 8 to 10 years, perhaps longer.
The other worthwhile investment is a bowl with a sieve that fits perfectly inside it for rice rinsing. Something you don’t hate using so you are less tempted to desecrate the cooking bowl.

These rice cooking tips are all so polite.

I give you this bit of bad worded stereotyped humor -
Full video https://youtu.be/53me-ICi_f8
Her rice reminds me more of Chinese rice porridge (though one of the more liquid variants) or Japanese Okayu.

I also learned that Persian style rice is cooked, drained, rinsed, and then cooked again to give it the crispy layer. And evidently some Indian rice dishes in certain family cooking styles (I will be asking a few people who love biriyani and know how to cook it) which use basmati. Some UK brands like Tilda Basmati and in Sweden rice advertise this as a way to cook rice. Cooking, then draining and rinsing also removes arsenic (an issue in certain areas though I'd probably eat less rice if it was cooked overly wet then rinsed liked this... so... same health effect?).

I like the Taiwanese Tatung classic rice cooker even though it is ugly. Much easier to clean than fuzzy logic cookers especially if you aren't fond of cleaning gaskets and easy to find a replacement stainless steel inner liner at many Chinese grocers (at least in our area). The liner isn't non-stick so you can use a metal spoon if you really want to and Uncle Roger won't be heart broken.

Still an issue, but particularly so when my daughter had an even smaller body, the arsenic and heavy metals in rice does concern me. When researching this seriously years ago I learned that thoroughly rinsing white rice in the Japanese way does have a significant impact, about 40% of any heavy metal residues are removed. So, whilst I did see that boiling rice in more water and then draining it was recommended, it didn’t seem particularly more effective than repeated rinsing of rice before cooking.

Different for BROWN a rice though, heavy metals are locked into the bran coating. I am way more careful than I used to be with brown rice, needs to be organic from a trusted source (where soil has been tested).
https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2020/...or-uk-infants/

RIP Rice 2020-2020 😆

Thanks for the info. I looked at the Zojirushi website and unfortunately its discontinued. Based on your comments, my rice cooker has held up well, going on seven years. Somewhat recently, I have used a basket strainer like the one you posted but found it breaks the rice grains. Would a plastic one be more gentle on the rice?

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

Just found out today that I’ll get to “shop” at one of my favourite Japanese stores for a week as from Wednesday.

Usually I put aside a part of my annual visit to drop in at a Tokyo branch of “Sou Sou”, but that just wasn’t possible this year. The huge surprise today when logging into the Animal Crossing Pocket Camp App was that there would be a short “pop up” Sou Sou event. Virtual shopping for virtual goods based on designs made in Kyoto.

I’ll get my jollies where I can find them, but even I understand that I am way too excited about this totally unexpected treat.

https://www.sousou.co.jp/other/pocketcamp/

Made some handrolls, sashimi, oshizushi, and musubi to commiserate about the high probably that our trip to Japan won't happen in February.



Sashimi for the cook

Prep station

The remnants

I recently got to know that this 'uncle roger' is a Malaysian, which makes the video doubly cringy because that chinaman accent is fake as fugg (literally nobody in Malaysia speaks with that accent, not even the most chinese educated ones).

"Uncle Roger's" accent leans towards Cantonese type to my ears. I'm more familiar with the Cantonese American or Canadian accent, Cantonese Malaysian American, and just a bit with Malaysian Mandarin one (where probably 20-30% of my conversation is in my accented Mandarin). Ng is often a Cantonese based last name though Malaysian might pronounce Ng differently So he might be using a Cantonese style accent via family (are Nigel and Roger typical Malaysian first names?) rather than Hokkien or Teochew. Or the BBC pronounced his last name incorrectly? Still way over the top and exaggerated.

Here's the comedian and chef in the video on BBC together and she doesn't personally cook rice that way, either https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dEq9pJbl60 Perhaps there is a huge untapped market for rice cookers and Zojirushi* could make inroads in UK and India. A friend said the instant pot rice cooking method still isn't quite as good as a fuzzy logic rice cooker after trying it out with medium grain rice.

Guessing at accents is a (weird) hobby of mine?

*A friend got a US Balmuda toaster. Don't forget all the lovely Japanese pour over coffee gear.

“Uncle Roger” is a fictional character with a fictional accent. Nigel Ng himself speaks just as you would expect for someone who grew up in Malaysia, went to University in the US and then went on to live in the U.K.

You should hear me “speak” English with a Spanish accent like my mother does - it is atrocious!!! Luckily I have no plans to release a video as Tía LapLap sharing my outrage at BBC paella Recipes.

Unless it’s medium grain BROWN rice!

Yes, I will have to poll friends on brown rice in instant pot. At least those who didn't use liquid smoke in theirs for pork and gaskets all impart that flavor months later.

I mostly see regional/expat cooking videos on YT so I figure someone locally might cook things in that manner and occasionally search for blogs which have expats to help adapt ingredients for local availability when I'm curious about substitutions. Twitter informed me Padma Lakshmi of Top Chef just did a series of US "Taste the Nation" which celebrates culinary diversity https://www.hulu.com/series/taste-th...1-277ec6c57368

Oh, thinking of Japanese appliances I sort of covet - Iris USA sells a 120V futon warmer also available on Amazon US. A friend imported a kotatsu years ago and I got to sit under it last winter while visiting. Do Japanese families still tend to use electric kotatsu or is the heated floor mat gaining some market share? I might look into a heated floor mat or heating pad along with a large down throw for winter WFH life since I want to open the windows at times for better circulation (not necessarily COVID seasonal, more that I get dry skin and nose easily & winter isn't very humid where I live).
https://www.irisusainc.com/blw-c2-bl...white-platinum

Oh, that futon warmer looks awesome! Thank you freecia! I see a present for my wife, for those damp cold winter days when she can't get warm enough. I looked at electric kotatsu on Amazon.jp but the shipping costs were insane.

I have the exact same plates at home!
I'd like to get more of those, but don't know what they're named or where to get them.
Do you know where you got them?

evergrn It looks like Corelle Spring Blossom
https://www.microwavecookingforone.c...ssomGreen.html
https://www.replacements.com/china-c...lowers/c/17019

The shape and plate color reminded me of a few Corelle items in our house & relatives homes from the same original set which are still used daily decades later - Corelle Butterfly Gold
https://www.microwavecookingforone.c...erflyGold.html

It's a nice practical piece of nostalgia associated with great food memories.