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Here is what I do not need: a big fancy rice cooker.
I am not a restaurant, nor a member of a family of six. I’m overwhelmed by the idea of 17 buttons, a digital screen, and more settings than I could possibly memorize. I barely have enough space in my kitchen for sheet pans, let alone a bulky appliance that does, in essence, the same thing as a pot and tight-fitting lid. If I brought one into my life, I would also have to move.
Here is what I do need: one cup of well-cooked rice, a couple times a week.
For this, I turn to my perfect, compact, one-button rice robot, the Zojirushi NHS-06.
Rice is the foundation of my personal food pyramid, holding up the rest of what I eat both literally and figuratively. It’s my last-minute crisis meal (fried rice), top choice for sauce soaker-upper (alongside saag or curry), and dependable comfort food (with a runny-yolked egg, drizzle of soy sauce, and serious scoop of chile crisp). My boyfriend makes a pot when he comes home from work—or, lately, around 6:30 PM, when work transitions into a screening space for re-runs of The Office—with the muscle memory of a professional, floating from pantry to sink like he’s being controlled by an outside force. And he is, basically: hunger, and the knowledge that almost anything else we could possibly make for dinner will only be improved by the addition of some rice. I buy jasmine and sushi rice in 20-pound bags, and basmati and brown rice in smaller quantities, decanting each into the pop-top containers that rule our kitchen shelves. I love rice, and would only ever endorse a cooker that produces sterling results, cup by cup, at a tri-weekly cadence. Five years into owning it, my low-fi Zojirushi has never done me wrong.
The Zojirushi NHS-06 is about as small as rice cookers come, with a maximum capacity of three uncooked cups, and it's dead simple to use. After adding your rice and water (the cooker comes with a handy measuring cup and has clear markings on the inside of the bowl indicating various water levels), you do literally the only thing you can: push the one button, which is really more like a lever. For about 12 minutes, a little red light indicates that the rice robot is hard at work; through the glass lid, you can watch the water gurgle and bubble as puffs of starchy-scented steam escape through the steam hole. When the grains are cooked, the light turns off and the lever snaps back into place with a loud pop, a sound which now has a Pavlovian effect on me. The rice—any type, though the water amounts you use will differ from variety to variety—is perfect every time, with no scorching at the bottom or dry bits at the top.
I have used the winner of the Epicurious rice cooker product review in the Test Kitchen before, a 1.8-liter induction number also from Zojirushi, and yes, it did a great job. It made fluffy, well-cooked jasmine rice for a crowd (albeit in 45 minutes, while taking up a lot of real estate on my station), and chirped a little tune to indicate completion, which was both charming and Black Mirror-esque in equal measure. It is a good rice cooker! Possibly the best rice cooker. But for my purposes, a machine that size and with that many features doesn’t make sense.
Most often, I am making one cup of uncooked rice at a time—about three cups cooked—which is enough for two people with a little leftover for tomorrow’s fried rice-for-one. The maximum capacity of the NHS-06 yields nearly nine cups of rice, which is more than enough for a small group. But even if the size of your dinner party (#TBT) is bigger than nine cups will feed, the NHS-06’s quick cook time means you can make rice in shifts, setting out a new batch before the first one even cools to room temperature.
As for fun features, I’m okay without them. For congee-style rice or anything fussy, I’m happy to go the old school route and use a pot on the stove; for me, the benefit of owning a rice cooker at all is that it makes a pot of basic, fluffy rice a hands-free (and almost brain-free) enterprise. I can direct all my attention at other parts of the meal with full confidence that the NHS-06 is the best sous chef in the game.
Because counter space (and outlet access) is at a premium in my apartment kitchen, I place my rice cooker on a wide window sill while in use, where it steams up our view of downtown Brooklyn and, in the distance, lower Manhattan. I’m dumb so I find this very romantic, in a cozy-night-in sort of way—but also because I feel so much love for my little Zojirushi workhorse. The small and simple cousin of the chunky guys that get all the glory, it's dependable, consistent, and costs less than 50 bucks. For a rice-loving household of two, it's the perfect machine, and a real testament to the idea that bigger isn't always better.
