For most Asians, rice is their comfort food. Nothing hits the spot more than a hot, fluffy bowl of rice. I am no exception to that rule. If we have rice, the rest of the meal is secondary. Rice with vegetables, or beef, or any type of gravy, and I’m good. Even plain white rice, or with soy sauce is good enough if I’m hungry enough. As much as I love rice, the Japanese love it more. In Japan there are over 300 varieties of rice, and many Japanese belong to rice of the month clubs.
The Japanese are obsessed with getting the perfect bowl of rice, so it is in this market that Toshiba is producing the “Vacuum Pressure Cooker”. It is the company’s most expensive rice cooker ever at $830. This rice cooker is able to boil the water in the cooker at a higher temperature making for fatter, shinier and sweeter grains of rice. It has a powerful vacuum pump to suck all the air out, and is designed to withstand 264 pound of pressure. It looks like a small spaceship. Here is a picture.
This model has already sold more than 70,000 since it launched in September making it the best seller in the super-expensive rice cooker category. So obviously there is a demand for $800 rice cookers, but does is really cook better rice? The Wall Street Journal conducted a blind taste taste testing rice cooked with very high end rice cookers and those cooked with older model cheaper rice cookers. The rice was cooked in the same way and sampled by a ricemeister. I did’nt even know there was such a thing as a ricemeister. A ricemeister is an rice expert who have passed a rigorous exam by the rice retailers’ association Japan Rice Retailers’ Association, testing their knowledge as well as their abilities to blend, store and polish rice correctly and identify rice varietals in a taste test. Its like a wine master except for rice. There are about 4,000 ricemesiters in Japan.
The ricemeister was able to identify the rice cooked in 3 of the 4 cookers correctly. He did’nt say which rice he liked better as tasteis subjective, but did conclude that there was not a significant difference between rice cooked in a high end cooker and a moderately priced one. He says even rice made with a cheap $20 rice cooker will taste good rice if it’s eaten right away.
The high end cookers do a better job of maintaining the quality of rice if it is kept warm in the cooker for a longer period. Perhaps in Japan, they have rice in the cooker all day long, like coffee is always on the pot all day in America, but most people like myself cook rice and eat it immediately. If you do this, there is no significant difference between rice cooked in a high end cooker and a cheap one. Compare to the high end cookers in Japan, my cooker in practically ancient, but my rice comes out fine for me. I prefer my rice fluffy, but do not mind too much if it is a bit hard as I like to pour gravy or juice over it anyways. So, I won’t be upgrading my rice cooker soon.
I love rice, too! And, I’ve been meaning to get a rice cooker for years. I’d like one that has a timer on it that will start cooking the rice about 30 minutes before I know I’m going to get home. Then, I can whip up the protein portion of the meal (I like tuna steaks on the grill with some minced garlic, green onion, tomato, and lemon or lime juice, for instance).
lolz, true true…I’m from Bangladesh and I don’t accept of having a full meal without a bowl of rice with some curry food with it.