Kitchen Gadget Recommendation

This past year, our rice cooker died. After researching options and brands for about 3 months (yeah I know but there was a decision matrix involved), Lou and I finally settled on a Sanyo ECJ-HC100S rice and slow cooker. Did seriously consider the Zojirushi cookers but they were all a little more expensive and didn't have the slow cooker feature.

Have to say, it is the coolest rice robot. Throw rice in it with the water, pick the rice type on the little control panel and let the fuzzy logic do its thing. It is a little slow. Take a good 45 minutes to do 5 cups of brown rice but it hasn't been a problem so far. Thou I haven't used it, it does have a delay cook option so you could set it up before going to work and it would be ready when you got back. The hold temp option works really well also. Since the cooker is kinda pressure sealed, keeps the rice nice and moist for hours after cooking.

Today, I finally got around to using it as a slow cooker. I made a double patch of Alton Brown's tapioca pudding in it. Worked great. Threw in the tapioca with the milk for 2 hrs on high. When done, it kept it warm until I came around and finished it off. In theory the rice robot also works as a vegetable steamer and will even make tofu if you are hard core.

So, if you are looking for a rice cooker that is also a multi-tasker, get this one. It does come in 5 1/2 cup model as well but the 10 cup does just fine making 2-3 cups of rice, so I would recommend the bigger one unless you are looking for something for that small apartment in Tokyo.