There’s nothing quite like a handy kitchen gadget to do the hard work for you—especially when cooking keeps you glued to the stove for way too long like for pretty much every rice recipe. Enter: KitchenAid’s new grain and rice cooker.
While the brand is famous for its stand mixers and attachments, its ventured out to new territory with a new high-tech gadget that can make everything from pinto beans and quinoa to basmati rice and oatmeal. To see what all the hype is about, I put the rice cooker to the test to see how it fared in cooking a cup of organic long grain white rice and kidney beans.
Since KitchenAid’s grain and rice cooker retails for $299.99, I wanted to keep an eye out for standout features that justify the price. First off, it’s very high-tech in comparison to your average rice cooker. It takes guesswork and human error out of measuring water since it calculates the right amount for up to eight cups’ worth of rice, beans, or grains. Plus, it has over 20 presets for popular ingredients, so cooking the right type of rice and beans was as easy as a touch of a button for me. If you want to cook a unique ingredient or try out a liquid like milk or broth in your next recipe, you can do that, too, by creating your own custom settings.
The grain and rice cooker was really easy to piece together. It features an eight-cup-capacity nonstick pot, steam basket, and water tank on a sleek tech base. After plugging in the cord attachment in my kitchen outlet, I simply flipped the gadget’s "on" switch to activate its mini touch screen. If you’re short on counter space, this fully assembled cooker might be a little big for your liking. But for what space it takes up, it makes up for with its cooking ability.
The touch screen had user-friendly prompts and presets to guide me through each prep step, like allowing me to choose the specific type of rice and bean I wanted to make and my desired texture for each one. While you can program this cooker up to a day in advance with its delayed start time, I wanted to see how it cooked both foods right away.
After separately pouring a cup of rice and kidney beans in the nonstick pot for each of my tests, the tool weighed them and shared an estimated cook time. Once the cooker got to work, I barely heard a peep out of it (the only time it made any noticeable noise was when water from the reservoir transferred to the rice pot for cooking).
The estimated cook time was fairly accurate in both tests. It took just over 36 minutes to make the cup of rice, in comparison to its 30-minute estimate. I was even more impressed with the kidney beans—it usually takes me two hours or more to cook these beans on the stove. But with this gadget? After soaking dry kidney beans overnight (if you're in a hurry, you can use the gadget's two-hour quick soak feature), it only took an hour-and-a-half to cook them up. Plus, it made a soft jingle sound twice to let me know that each of my dishes were done cooking.
As for the tasting results? (*drum roll, please*) The rice came out fluffy and tender! And the kidney beans were soft with every bite. And the gadget's "keep warm" setting gave me the option to keep the food hot for six hours, even after they finished cooking.
For anyone who hates clean-up, this gadget will be a major time-saver. After letting the cooker and its attachments cool completely, it was easy to take apart. The nonstick pot and its attachments came clean easily with a few gentle swipes of a non-abrasive sponge, using mild dish soap and water.
As far as rice cookers go, this one hits the mark for its ability to make a classic pot of rice and beans—and more with the help of the included recipe book. But if you’re looking for a small rice cooker or a versatile Instant Pot to pressure cook rice in a snap, we’ve rounded up our other favorites that are worth your dollars. And you can shop even more top-rated rice cookers here:
BLACK+DECKER 6-Cup Rice Cooker
DASH 2-Cup Mini Rice Cooker
Nashia Baker is a commerce editor at Hearst Magazines; she covers all things home and lifestyle across brands such as Oprah Daily, Cosmopolitan, Delish, and Esquire. Before joining Hearst, she highlighted small business owners, creatives, and the best shoppable content.
