I'm currently living with my sister, who could be described as a non-believer in all things gadget relatd. As Ideal Home's Kitchen Appliances Editor, I have of course taken her stance as a personal challenge, trying to get her to take to one of the products I've currently got on trial in our kitchen. There's only one thing (other than her now essential morning coffee from our machine) that I've succeeded with to date: the humble rice cooker.
Last year, Nigella Lawson recommended an affordable £25 rice cooker as an ideal Christmas gift and once you have one at home, you'll know exactly why. These are the three reasons that persuaded my sister to get to thinking a rice cooker is an essential appliance.
This is the cheapest pick from our guide to top-rated rice cookers and for under £25, it massively impressed. The caveat with this model is that it can only cook white rice, but it does that very, very well.
This is Nigella Lawson's rice cooker of choice as per her 2024 gift guide. In her recommendation she said she uses it 'thrice weekly' for quick meals.
This is the exact rice cooker my sister has grown very attached to, with a 45 minute timer for white rice and a stellar keep warm function. My Lakeland Digital Rice cooker review has the full details.
1. It's far more economical
Before the dawn of the rice cooker in our kitchen, my sister would begrudgingly spend money on pouches of microwave rice quite regularly. Even at their cheapest via somewhere like Aldi, those 250g pouches will set you back at least 50p per packet, compared to a 1kg pack of uncooked rice from the same retailer for just 52p (at the time of writing). For just 2p more, you're getting 750 grams more rice to portion out across your weekly meals – it's not hard to see that the maths clearly favour cooking your own rice.
And while the saving you can make is obvious, having a rice cooker in your arsenal also makes the entire cooking process much easier too, which is crucial for reluctant home cooks. So not only will you be making one very economical change by investing in a rice cooker, but you can also skip the trial and error of having to learn how to cook rice at all.
2. Keep warm settings help you plan ahead
If you're anything like me, you're always trying to find ways to get ahead on cooking so that you're not scrambling around for inspiration when 5pm rolls around. One of the big secret weapons in our house for this is the keep warm setting on the rice cooker, which can keep the contents ready to eat for up to 6 hours.
That means that the five minutes you spend prepping your rice cooker on your lunch break or as soon as you get in from work can really reap rewards time-wise, giving you more time to prep the other elements of your dinner.
3. It's easy to stash away
Keeping a neat kitchen is at the top of the agenda in our household, which means that appliances that can be stashed in our tall pull out appliance garage are always a winner. Rice cookers are almost always compact, meaning that you won't need to rearrange your worktops in order to justify buying one.
There are even models with capacities of 1 litre or under for the very space-limited, like this 500ml one from Lakeland (for £34.99) which is just 16cm tall.
In our household at least, these factors mean that a rice cooker has the winning formula to make an appliance skeptic a little more inclined to broaden their cooking horizons. Is it an essential in your household too?
