10 Common Rice Cooker Mistakes To Avoid - Tasting Table

"Can you make rice in a standard pot on the stove? Sure. However, if you want to make the rice-cooking experience even simpler, it makes sense to invest in a rice cooker. These machines really allow you to just set cooking instructions and forget. Fill the pot of your rice cooker with rice and water, turn it to "cook," and before you know it, you will have a pot of fluffy, perfectly cooked rice. Sounds super simple, right?"

"The rationale behind rinsing your rice is a simple one: Rice is a very starchy food, and when you add hot water, those starches are released. Without rinsing those starches away, however, they have nowhere to go and ultimately settle back into the rice as it cooks. This can leave you with rice that's too clumpy, offering a less-than-ideal texture."

Rice cookers let users set cooking instructions and produce fluffy, perfectly cooked rice with minimal attention. Common errors can still affect final texture, but simple fixes usually resolve them. Not rinsing rice leaves surface starches that release in hot water and then settle back into grains during cooking, producing clumpy, less desirable rice; rinsing until the water runs pretty clear, generally requiring three to four rinses, prevents this. Some inexpensive rice cookers include only a single "cook" setting, which limits customization for different rice types. Attention to rinsing and appropriate settings yields more consistent, better-textured rice.

Read at Tasting Table