There’s nothing fairly like a helpful kitchen gadget to do the arduous give you the results you want—particularly when cooking retains you glued to the range for manner too lengthy like for just about each rice recipe. Enter: KitchenAid’s new grain and rice cooker.
Whereas the model is legendary for its stand mixers and attachments, its ventured out to new territory with a brand new high-tech gadget that may make all the things from pinto beans and quinoa to basmati rice and oatmeal. To see what all of the hype is about, I put the rice cooker to the check to see the way it fared in cooking a cup of natural lengthy grain white rice and kidney beans.
KitchenAid Grain and Rice Cooker
Since KitchenAid’s grain and rice cooker retails for $299.99, I wished to maintain an eye fixed out for standout options that justify the worth. First off, it’s very high-tech compared to your common rice cooker. It takes guesswork and human error out of measuring water because it calculates the correct quantity for as much as eight cups’ value of rice, beans, or grains. Plus, it has over 20 presets for common substances, so cooking the proper sort of rice and beans was as simple as a contact of a button for me. If you wish to prepare dinner a novel ingredient or check out a liquid like milk or broth in your subsequent recipe, you are able to do that, too, by creating your individual customized settings.
The grain and rice cooker was very easy to piece collectively. It options an eight-cup-capacity nonstick pot, steam basket, and water tank on a glossy tech base. After plugging within the twine attachment in my kitchen outlet, I merely flipped the gadget’s “on” swap to activate its mini contact display screen. In the event you’re quick on counter area, this totally assembled cooker may be a little bit massive in your liking. However for what area it takes up, it makes up for with its cooking potential.
The contact display screen had user-friendly prompts and presets to information me by means of every prep step, like permitting me to decide on the particular sort of rice and bean I wished to make and my desired texture for every one. Whilst you can program this cooker as much as a day upfront with its delayed begin time, I wished to see the way it cooked each meals instantly.
After individually pouring a cup of rice and kidney beans within the nonstick pot for every of my exams, the software weighed them and shared an estimated prepare dinner time. As soon as the cooker set to work, I barely heard a peep out of it (the one time it made any noticeable noise was when water from the reservoir transferred to the rice pot for cooking).
The estimated prepare dinner time was pretty correct in each exams. It took simply over 36 minutes to make the cup of rice, compared to its 30-minute estimate. I used to be much more impressed with the kidney beans—it normally takes me two hours or extra to prepare dinner these beans on the range. However with this gadget? After soaking dry kidney beans in a single day (in the event you’re in a rush, you should utilize the gadget’s two-hour fast soak characteristic), it solely took an hour-and-a-half to prepare dinner them up. Plus, it made a mushy jingle sound twice to let me know that every of my dishes have been completed cooking.
As for the tasting outcomes? (*drum roll, please*) The rice got here out fluffy and tender! And the kidney beans have been mushy with each chunk. And the gadget’s “preserve heat” setting gave me the choice to maintain the meals sizzling for six hours, even after they completed cooking.
For anybody who hates clean-up, this gadget will likely be a serious time-saver. After letting the cooker and its attachments cool utterly, it was simple to take aside. The nonstick pot and its attachments got here clear simply with a number of mild swipes of a non-abrasive sponge, utilizing gentle dish cleaning soap and water.
So far as rice cookers go, this one hits the mark for its potential to make a traditional pot of rice and beans—and extra with the assistance of the included recipe e-book. However in the event you’re in search of a small rice cooker or a flexible Instantaneous Pot to strain prepare dinner rice in a snap, we’ve rounded up our different favorites which can be value your {dollars}. And you may store much more top-rated rice cookers right here:
Nashia Baker is a commerce editor at Hearst Magazines; she covers all issues dwelling and life-style throughout manufacturers equivalent to Oprah Day by day, Cosmopolitan, Delish, and Esquire. Earlier than becoming a member of Hearst, she highlighted small enterprise homeowners, creatives, and the very best shoppable content material.