Steamer Juicer Cookers

Customer Reviews

Most helpful customer reviews

892 of 906 people found the following review helpful.
Great machine but Understand the Capacity
By Thomas E. Tweedel
I finally convinced my wife to replace the old but still functional single switch rice cooker I'd owned for about 10 years. I have longed for something with an off switch so rice doesn't burn to the bottom when I forget to unplug it. This guy was the ticket.It seems like a fairly complex machine but its really easy to use once you understand the setup. Its well designed. The pot is easy to clean and the inner lid snaps off for easy cleaning as well.I have to say the rice it produces is some of the best I have had. I did a side by side cookoff with the old and the new rice cookers. The same rice just seemed to have more consistant texture and better strong flavor. Definatley worth the upgrade since we do lots of rice.The one drawback I found is with the somewhat misleading specifications. They say this is a "5 cup" rice cooker. So I'm thinking 5 cups=40oz. Plenty big enough for a family of 4. Well its not quite that much. It seems in Asia (on the metric system) their idea of a cup is a teacup. If you look at the picture and see the two little cups next to the machine, it will hold 5 of THOSE cups. Those cups are approximatley 6oz each. So really it is a 4 (American) cup rice cooker, not 5. Of course 3/4 of a cup is about how much rice you'll eat in a meal so one run of this machine should be able to produce rice for 5. If you need more that that consider the NS-ZAC18 10 cup (8 cup) model.The trick to the machine is to use the little cups that come with it. You measure out a few "cups" of rice and dump it into the pot. Then you add water and fill it up to the graduated mark on the inside of the pot. So if you toss in 2 cups you add water until you hit the 2 cup mark. It has different markings for Brown, White and Sushi rice.Before discovering the proper way of using the smaller "cups" I used a regular 8oz cup on some Jasmine rice (then filled it to the designated level). It still came out way better than my rice cooker. It was firm but not hard and full of flavor. So if you screw up or loose your little "cup" you can still get great rice as long as the stickness is not absolutely critical to the receipe.The manual makes a huge deal out of its ability to handle some "no rinse" rice who's milling technology was proudly developed in Japan. They devote pages to the setting and cooking it, but actually its pretty similar to the regular rice, you just use the green cup instead of the clear cup.All in all this is a great little machine. If you want the best and are willing to pay the bucks this is the one to get. You will not feel your money is wasted.Update:Its now 6 years later and countless batches of rice and this little thing is still going strong. The pot has a few scratches from years of continous daily use but its holding up.We expanded our use of this little gem. I've learned not to think of it as just a rice producing device but as a rice cooker + modified crock pot. My wife started using it to produce porriage and then later soup. She'll pour the ingredients in the night before, set the timer and her breakfast is ready 30 minutes before she wakes up. You can use it for grain soups, porriage, oatmeal and more. We buy packs of Thai flavored rice that say were supposed to cook on the stove. We dump the stuff in and hit go. They come out plenty tastey.There is a quick cooking cycle that we use a lot. Shaves about 20 minutes off the cook time. Flavor suffers a little (though its still great) but when your in a rush...Perhaps the most amazing thing however is what it does to brown rice. As a kid I was never fond of brown rice. Too hard and crunch and I was never that big on bran flavor. We got some brown rice and started cooking it in this thing and it was a whole new world. I don't know how it did it but it came out soft, a little chewey and decent tasting. Brown rice was now something worth eating vs avoiding.So if for whatever reason you are looking to switch to brown rice but not thrilled with the flavor do yourself a favor and get one of these units. It makes it a whole new experience.We haven't tried steaming anything yet. Maybe when our steamer breaks..

539 of 551 people found the following review helpful.
Simply Amazing!
By J. Baldwin
This rice cooker makes the best rice we have ever had - at least since our travels to Southeast Asia. And despite the fact that this machine *seems* smarter than it's user, it is remarkably simple to operate. The instruction book lacks a little bit in terms of recipes and creativity - but it does a good job giving you the basic idea of how to use this machine. This space age looking rice cooker is a little pricey, so it may be overkill for some - but I love all the features this offers and consider it well worth the price (which is a hundred less than what it is offered for here at Amazon). We eat a lot of brown rice, which is not something that other rice cookers handle well. This one has a setting for brown rice, and cooks it to perfection. Also has a setting for semi-brown rice, sushi rice, porridge & more. You get to pick how soft or hard you want the rice to turn out by using the control panel. Being able to set a timer for having rice ready when we get home from work is handy. This thing also cooks complete meals - definitely get a good cookbook for rice cooker cooking :-) We are expirimenting with many varieties of rice that I normally would have shyed away from, since I could not seem to cook even plain old brown rice properly until now.It took me 6 months to decide to buy this thing. We were originally contemplating the MYC10 series, but the specific settings for brown rice became important to us. And this one takes up less space on the countertop than the MYC10. We will be eating rice nearly every day now thanks to this machine! I am definitely glad we chose the ZAC10, and would recommend this product. It's a keeper!UPDATED JUNE 12, 2004: We have now had this rice cooker for nearly a year, and have used it at least 3 times a week. It has held up to regular use quite well, we have not had a single problem with it. If anything, we are eating at home more than ever because of the simplicity of planning meals ahead of time. One thing that we have learned is that the 5 cup capacity is for using the cooker for white rice. Brown rice capacity is about 3 cups. So if you anticipate using this for more than 3 6 oz. cups of dry brown rice, you might consider steppig up to the 10 cup capacity model ZAC18. One tip for making very tasty rice, use a broth instead of water (or 1/2 and 1/2). If you are on fence about this cooker go ahead and take the leap - it is fantastic! No regrets!UPDATED April 18, 2008: Well, the "Brown Rice" setting finally died this week after nearly five (yes FIVE!) faithful years of weekly use. We remain very pleased with this product, and plan to upgrade to the newest model in a 10 cup capacity.

172 of 175 people found the following review helpful.
Excellent Rice Cooker
By Marco V. Gutierrez
Excellent rice cooker. So far, I've used it for white and brown rice with and without the automatic timer and it works great. I'll use it for shushi next week. With the automatic timer feature you set up the machine and then tell the rice cooker the time of day when you want your rice to be ready. After that time it switches automatically into 'keep warm' mode so your rice is ready to eat in case you're delayed. This is one of the main reasons I bought this specific model.A few things to note so you can make a more informed purchase.1- Cup size is different. I guess a japanese cup is different than those used in the US. Therefore, 10 cups in this case actually translates to 7.5 US-sized cups of rice.2- Cooking time is longer than 'normal'. I included the estimates for some types of rice straight from the manual. The zojirushi website also has estimates.a- Quick cooking (only white rice): 35-45 minb- White Rice: 51-60 minc- Sushi rice: 47-58 mnd- Brown rice: 82-1083- The minimum amount of rice you can make with the 10 cup model is 1 cup except for sweet, mixed, and brown rice where the minimum is 2 cups. Mixed rice is one where you ad a few other ingredients that will cook together with the rice 9eg. soup stock, soy sauce). For the 5 cup the minimum you can make is 1 cup for all types of rice except porridge where you can make 0.5 cups. Again, these are the smaller cup sizes.4- For those with small kitchens, the 10 cup machine has the following dims (WxDxH in inches): 11x14.2x9.4. The 5 cup is 10x13x8.1Enjoy perfect rice every time. Spend your time preparing other parts of your meal.