Do you love making sushi or onigiri but hate preparing the rice? If you answered yes, you are not alone! It can be tricky to find the best sushi rice cooker that will get the rice just right for sushi. After all, you don’t want it too soft or too hard. Plus, it needs to be just sticky enough.
Thankfully, we discovered a sushi rice cooker that takes the guesswork out of making rice. The Zojirushi Micom Rice Cooker and Warmer makes preparing rice for making sushi simple. Today, we are going to share why we love this sushi cooker.
The Best Sushi Cooker – Our Review
This sushi cooker is available in two sizes. Most people will do just fine with the 5.5 cup version. However, if you know you will be making sushi a lot, or you simply eat a lot of rice, the 10 cup version might be your better option.
The sushi cooker comes with a removable inner lid, as well as inner cooking pan and steam basket. Being able to remove the inner lid is amazing. Makes cleaning so much easier!
The inner cooking pan has a nonstick coating. This ensures rice and other foods do not stick to it during the cooking process.
You won’t use the steam basket to prepare your rice. However, it comes in handy when you want to steam vegetables, or even fish, while cooking your rice. It is important to keep in mind that you won’t be able to cook as much rice if you choose to steam foods at the same time. There isn’t enough room once you place the steam basket inside the sushi cooker.
Our favorite thing about this sushi cooker though is the retractable power cord. You will never spend your days tucking the cord behind this cooker again. Simply store the power cord until it is time to use your sushi cooker.
A rice measuring cup, spatula, and spatula holder are also included for your convenience. Make sure you always know where this measuring cup is. It is different from a standard US measuring cup. This one is a little smaller, so there will be a huge difference if you were to use another one while making rice with this machine.
Try these sushi recipes
If you love sushi you’ll have to try our Japanese rice cakes recipe, or salmon onigiri. They make a great lunch on the go, a healthy snack for the kids (my 10 and 11 year old sons love these for school snacks. My older son told me his friends love them so much that they have “a high trading value”. HAHA!
A 3-cup sushi rice makes about 15 of these onigiri snacks. Not convinced, here’s what it looks like:
Sushi Cooker Settings
Part of what makes this the best sushi cooker is that it has 4 different settings. Those settings are:
- White Rice – Prepares fluffy white rice effortlessly
- Brown Rice – Creates perfect brown rice every time – no more hard brown rice for you!
- Steam – Perfect for steamed vegetables or seafood
- Cake – Yes, this offers a cake setting! You can easily bake cakes in this sushi cooker!
We love how we can choose the setting for what we are preparing in this sushi cooker. It leaves the guesswork out for us and prepares perfect rice every time.
If you’re looking for more great rice dishes, try our Peruvian Cantonese Stir Fried Rice.
Yes, it does take a little longer to cook rice than other sushi cookers. However, this is due to the soaking time and milder cooking temperature. The result of perfectly cooked rice every time is worth the extra minutes.
Pros of Sushi Cooker
We love all the pros of using this sushi cooker, and it truly is the best sushi cooker we’ve ever used. Our favorite pros include:
- Easy to use – one button programming
- Easy to clean
- Keeps rice warm for as long as you want – automatically goes into warming mode
- Power cord storage
- Clock stays on when unplugged
- Handle ensures easy carrying
Cons of Sushi Cooker
As with everything else, there are always going to be cons to using this sushi cooker. This sushi cooker has the following cons:
- Cannot be used as a slow cooker
- Measuring cup, spatula, and steam basket do not all fit inside for easy storage
- Must make at least 1 cup of rice at a time – no smaller batches are possible
- Takes longer to prepare rice than stovetop method or some other rice cookers
If you have never used a sushi cooker before to prepare your rice, you do not know what you are missing! We have fallen in love with this sushi cooker and will never make rice any other way. Purchase this sushi cooker today and reap the benefits the next time you are making sushi.
