Day 259: Today's Pick — The Zojirushi Neuro Fuzzy Rice Cooker

The Zojirushi NS-ZCC10 is a beige plastic rice cooker, made in Japan, that costs about $230, looks like an appliance you would have bought in 1992, and produces, on every setting, the best rice you have ever made at home.

I am going to make a slightly grand claim, because it is warranted: this is the single best kitchen appliance I have ever bought.

Some context. I am a moderately serious home cook. I have a stand mixer. I have a Vitamix. I have a sous vide. I have a digital scale, three knives I would die for, an espresso machine, and the previously-recommended Stagg kettle. Of all of these, the Zojirushi is the appliance I would, if forced to keep only one, keep first. It earns its counter space approximately every three days.

Let me describe what makes it different from a regular rice cooker.

A standard rice cooker works on a brutally simple principle. There is a heating coil under the inner pot. The coil heats until the water boils off and the rice cooks. Once the inside of the pot exceeds 100°C — which happens when there is no water left — a thermostat trips and the cooker switches to "warm" mode. This works fine. It produces, with practice, decent rice. It is, however, a binary system: heat on, heat off, no nuance.

The Zojirushi Neuro Fuzzy is a fuzzy logic rice cooker. It uses a combination of temperature sensors, weight sensors, and an embedded computer running an algorithm that adjusts the heating profile in real time, based on what the cooker detects in the pot. Different rice varieties — short-grain Japanese, long-grain jasmine, basmati, brown, sushi, sweet, mixed — all benefit from different temperature curves and different soaking and resting times. The Zojirushi has settings for each of these, and the fuzzy logic algorithm interpolates between settings based on conditions. The result, in my experience, is that even when you make small mistakes — too much water, too little water, slightly old rice, slightly cool kitchen — the cooker compensates. It is the rare appliance that makes you a better cook by forgiving you.

The output: separated, glistening grains; soft but not mushy; consistent every time; every variety I have thrown at it has come out, by my standards, restaurant-quality.

A few specific features I love.

The brown rice setting. Brown rice is, in my experience, the variety most rice cookers do badly. The Zojirushi's brown setting takes a long time (about 1 hour 50 minutes) but produces brown rice that is genuinely fluffy and pleasant rather than the chewy underdone texture I usually associate with home-cooked brown rice. This setting alone justified the purchase for me.

The mixed-rice setting. Cooks rice with vegetables and proteins mixed in (Japanese takikomi gohan, Korean bibimbap-style mixed rice). Adjusts for the additional moisture and weight.

The timer. Set the cooker the night before, with rice and water inside, and have hot fresh rice ready when you wake up. This is the small daily luxury. It has converted me, over eight years, into a rice-and-eggs-for-breakfast person.

The keep-warm function. Goes to a low temperature after cooking and holds rice at proper texture for up to twelve hours. (Twelve is the limit; after that, the rice starts to dry out.) Practically, this means you cook a batch in the morning and have hot rice for breakfast, lunch, and a small evening snack.

The song. When you start the cooker, it plays a small electronic version of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. When the rice is done, it plays it again. This is, after eight years, the small audio feature I most look forward to in my kitchen.

A few practical notes. The 5.5-cup model (the NS-ZCC10) is the right size for two- and three-person households; the 10-cup model is for larger families. The inner pot is non-stick and has held up to eight years of daily use without scratching, but you should not put metal utensils inside (use the included plastic paddle). The exterior is plastic and beige; if your kitchen aesthetic is "modernist showroom," you will need to make peace with the appliance's slightly-clunky design language. I have made my peace.

Pricing: $230–$280 retail; rarely on sale. Japanese imports (the NS-ZCC10-XJ Japanese-domestic-market version with slightly different settings) are sometimes available on specialty Asian-market sites for slightly less. Buyer beware: Japanese versions ship with 100V plugs and require a step-down transformer to run on US 120V outlets.

A final note. There is a quiet category of Japanese kitchen appliances — the Zojirushi rice cooker, the Tiger water boiler, the Toshiba microwave with the convection function — that are over-engineered, slightly homely, expensive, and absolutely worth the money. They do one thing, do it perfectly, and last for decades. The Zojirushi is the king of the category.

Day 259. The pick sings.