On one of my first dates with my now-boyfriend, he went on a tangent about how you can never go a full day without touching plastic. At the time, in 2021, I thought it was a bit dramatic. Who cares? But five years into our relationship, I, like so many others, have come around on the plastic question. Slowly but surely, we’ve been swapping in wooden cutting boards for our shedding plastic ones and tossing our nonstick pans in favor of cast iron and stainless steel. There was one thing, however, I’d been resistant to replacing: our nonstick rice cooker.
My beloved nonstick rice cooker was from Aroma and had been cooking light, fluffy pots of rice since we were in college. I had no intention of messing with the base of our weekly salmon and tofu dinners, but it was getting increasingly difficult to ignore the growing number of scratches in the nonstick coating, which were proof that, yes, I was eating plastic with every spoonful of rice. So with a vote of confidence from my boyfriend’s parents, who had made the switch to Aroma’s stainless-steel rice cooker about a year and a half ago, we got one too. Unlike your typical rice cooker, which has an aluminum or stainless-steel inner pot with a nonstick coating, this one is fitted with a coating-free stainless-steel pot and a glass lid.
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Compared to our old rice cooker, which had separate buttons for rice types and cooking methods, this one has just two settings, “warm” and “cook.” When making the first few pots of jasmine rice, I proceeded as I normally would, washing my rice until the water ran clear before mixing it with an equal amount of water to cook. I chalked up the first pot of dry, clumpy rice to user error. After all, rice cookers are notoriously finicky. But after a few more pots turned out the same, I scoured the user manual, where I found the key to making non-starchy, non-gummy rice: the manual’s table with recommended ratios of water to rice that’s reflected in fill lines etched into the rice pot itself. Since realizing our oversight, our rice has been perfectly tender and fluffy. Now, in just 25 minutes, we can make four cups of light yet satisfyingly chewy rice to accompany our pan-seared salmon, mapo tofu, and poké bowls. (It can make up to six cups of rice for nights that call for more servings.) In fact, my boyfriend and I agree that our new rice cooker makes even better rice than our old one. And best of all — it’s plastic free.
My boyfriend and I make salmon and rice at least once a week.
Photo: Bella Druckman
To make, say, two cups of white rice using the included measuring cup, you’ll need to add water to the line that reads “2” and flip the switch to “cook.” (Just note: The manual is operating on the volume of the cup that comes with the rice cooker, which is ¾ of a standard cup.) Compared to the Strategist’s best overall rice cooker, this one’s built-in microcomputer, which senses how your rice is cooking, is less sophisticated, so I recommend referring to the table again to find the recommended cook time and setting a separate timer on your phone. This isn’t necessary as the rice cooker will turn off on its own, but the rice may be overcooked if you rely only on that. I also recommend unplugging the machine to prevent it from overcooking the grains after you fluff your rice, as the “warm” setting is powerful.
Considering the rice cooker goes for $40, I couldn’t ask for anything more. I don’t mind a few minor inconveniences — like setting a separate timer on my phone or remembering to unplug the machine — to make sure my rice isn’t lined with a nonstick coating. At about eight inches by ten inches, our little rice cooker fits neatly into our cabinet, but there’s a larger version that can make up to 14 cups of cooked rice if you’re feeding more people. And perhaps most important, it’s easy to clean: I can scrub off the few stubborn grains that remain after a meal with my sponge or simply let them soak until they fall away. If you’d rather not handwash it, you can stick the inner pot in the dishwasher and forget about it until the next time you’d like to make some plump, fluffy, and microplastic-free rice in less than half an hour.
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Dining and Cooking