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rice cookers: do i need one with sushi mode?

benjy_k

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2 Jan 2009
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My question is can any rice cooker produce good japanese rice for sushi?

I've noticed that there are some rice cookers with a sushi rice setting, and was wondering what the differences are compared to the setting for normal white rice. Is the sushi setting just a gimmick?

There are apparently no such fancy cookers available in the UK- and the tefal cooker I am looking at seems to only accommodate for basmati/ thai etc long grain types of rice.

I have only ever cooked rice in a pan and would apprieciate being educated on this matter!

Benjy
 
No, you can just cook rice in normal way - I've never heard of a rice cooker with the special "sushi mode" myself...

Just make sure you are cooking short grains, as long grains has no stickiness.
You have to add some vinegar and other seasoning to rice; without certain stickiness, grains won't hold together.
😌

I've found this webpage explaining how to make sushi, beginning with how to cook rice.
http://au.lifestyle.yahoo.com/b/better-homes-gardens/5294/sushi
Just one big mistake in this page - it mentions "onigiri" which is means "rice ball", it is something totally different from "nigiri zushi".

http://www.sushi-master.com/usa/whatis/recipes.html
This page shows how to make nigiri and norimaki with photos.
Be careful about the recipe - 3kg of rice is to serve quite a lot of people, way too much for a beginner to try it at home!
(This page came from this site: http://www.sushi-master.com/usa/index2.html)
 
I have a rice cooker with sushi mode (as well as "genmai" mode) and use it to cook sushi rice. However, it only cooks the rice (shorter cooking time with less water), and you will have to prepare and mix the vinegar-sugar solution yourself.

There shouldn't be any problem making sushi rice with a regular rice cooker, as long as you follow the recipe (cooking rice with less water, etc.) carefully.

Check out the links undrentide gave you, and I think you'll be fine! 👍
 
I have a rice cooker that cook both long grain and short grain rice i guess it depend on what country of origin it is from..
 
Sushi rice should be cooked with slightly less water (because you add vinegar) and cooked slightly shorter, so that the rice won't be too soft.
If the rice is too soft, it can be partially mashed when you mix the vinegar, which makes the texture bad and the vinegar won't be mixed evenly.
If your rice cooker doesn't have the sushi mode, you can reduce the water instead. It would be difficult to shorten the cooking time manually, but less water and cooling the rice immediately would be enough to avoid overcooking.
 
expensive rice cookers

A lot of rice cookers in stores these days cost between 20,000-40,000 yen. I even saw one that costs 80,000 yen. Are they that much better than my 5,000 yen rice cooker? Does anyone know?
 
i found the answer to my previous question. The expensive rice cookers use induction heating and have a few more functions for different textures of rice than my ツ??,000 rice cooker.

I don't think the average westerner could tell the difference, so save your money.
 
I've noticed that there are some rice cookers with a sushi rice setting, and was wondering what the differences are compared to the setting for normal white rice. Is the sushi setting just a gimmick?
There are apparently no such fancy cookers available in the UK

Hi Benjy,

Hope we aren't breaking any forum rules by posting this, but we wanted to let you know that there are rice cookers available in the UK for cooking sushi rice. We are a UK based company which stocks Zojirushi fuzzy logic rice cookers compatible with UK and European power. These cookers have a special 'sushi' rice setting, as other people have mentioned.

The difference between cooking rice in a pan and in a fuzzy logic rice cooker is that the rice cooker takes all the thinking out of the cooking process and makes it so much easier to produce perfect rice everytime with the press of a button. We wouldn't be without our rice cooker! The sushi rice produced on this setting of the rice cooker is superb.

Hope this helps

Donna and Neil
 
rice cookers: do i need one with sushi mode? No, not really...

Hi Benjy, sorry if we have come to this post a little late...

...further to some of the previous posts you don't need a special sushi mode to make sushi rice. All you need is the ability to cook good quality Japanese rice, as tsurumurasaki states you can use slightly less water to allow for the seasoning you will add once the rice is cooked.

The key to making good rice for sushi is adding the right volume of Sushi-su, which is the seasoning you add to make sushi rice. It's basically a mix of rice vinegar, sugar and salt.

You can buy Sushi-su from various Asian groceries and increasingly from mainstream supermarkets. If you can't buy it easily, its very simple to make.

One option for high quality rice cookers in the UK and Europe is "Cook Japan" - we also have various sushi machines.

Good luck with your sushi, but with such tasty food I'm sure you won't got too wrong
 
Is the sushi setting just a gimmick?

In my opinion, no...the sushi setting on a rice cooker is not a gimmick. I have tried cooking sushi both in a pan and in my Zojirushi and honestly it's so much easier in the Zoji! I found when cooking sushi rice in a pan I had to play around with the water to rice ratio and I ended up with some real disasters where the rice wasn't cooked right and I had to throw it away, such a waste of food. Now I just press a button and it's done...saving so much time and effort - time you can use preparing the rest of your meal (or having a glass of wine while you wait!).

Moving around Asia for my job I take my Zoji with me everywhere I move because I find having a rice cooker, especially a good fuzzy logic one like mine which has lots of different setting for different types of rice is great, is well worth the money and time saving! Now if only I could find brown rice here so I can use that setting...no-one in Asia seems to eat brown rice but I ate it all the time in the UK! :(
 
Now if only I could find brown rice here so I can use that setting...no-one in Asia seems to eat brown rice but I ate it all the time in the UK! :(

I'm not sure about other countries, but in Japan brown rice (gen-mai) is available - in supermarkets they sell easy-to-cook brown rice which can be cooked with ordinary white rice with usual amount of water/time.
I hope you can find it in Philippines too.
genmai-1.jpg


Also you can find mixed grains to add to rice (black rice, red rice, wheat, oat, millet, sesame, etc.) which is healthy and tasty. :)
zakkoku-1.jpg
 
All I can say is that I had an Aroma brand rice cooker and following directions exactly(proper amounts of rice and water), the cooker would sometimes take forever before it would stop cooking resulting in overcooked, dry and even burned rice. I even experimented using different amounts of water to rice ratio and different types of rice with no better result. So since I could not depend on the cooker to automatically shut off, I had to watch the time myself and shut off the rice cooker when I thought the rice was done.

I finally just threw away the rice cooker and went back to the old fashioned way of boilng rice in water and letting it simmer until cooked which always worked well for me. Eventually, I may get another rice cooker/steamer, but will search for a better brand.
 
I think the sushi setting is a gimmick, sushi rice is just japanese short grain rice... I bought my rice cooker from Japan Centre in London and they sell them online too! japancentre.com
 
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