Rizo Micom Rice Cooker & Warmer
The Rizo Micom Rice Cooker & Warmer from Zojirushi is a great way to cook rice and rice dishes as well as steam seafood and chicken simply and perfectly.
Ease of Use/Performance: 24/25
Convenience/Storage 24/25
Appearance/Design 24/25
How much I enjoy 24/25
Total: 96/100
Cook rice with a simple and easy appliance that allows you to not only cook the rice perfectly but keep it warm for hours. Cook risotto, sushi rice and even steam chicken, seafood and vegetables the easy way with the Rizo Rice Cooker & Warmer.
First a lesson in rice before I get into the Rizo Rice Cooker & Warmer and boy did I learn a lot with this review. There are several different kinds of rice and even two main categories or species of rice.
The white rice we all use from the rice and Asian isle of our grocery market and have been using for years is usually the long grain version of white rice. There is also a short grain version that can also be found if not in the same isle of the grocery store then at the specialty section or even an Asian Market.
Rice comes in two main species, the white and brown rice that comes from Asia and Africa, Oryza and the wild rice of America or Zizania. Both rice are grains in the grass family but are different genus but are often used with the same cooking methods.
White rice starts off as a brown rice that has the germ and part of the husk on it after the first milling process, then the rice can be prepared in a few different ways. Some of the rice is sold with the bran still on each grain or the bran, the germ and husk, can be completely removed to give you white rice we see in bags at the store.
The grain with the bran still attached is very nutritious as it contains more nutrients and fiber before the bran is removed. If you parboil the grains of rice with the bran still attached you soak some of these nutrients into the grains of rice and also soften the rice.
You would then dry the rice and milled it again to get rid of the husk and germ from the outside in a final process. This process allows cooking later to be shorter and leaves the grains of rice with less starch to allow for easier cooking.
This is how they make Minute Rice or quick cooking rice, parboil the rice to soak it and give the grains some of the nutritional value from the bran into the rice grains. The rice is then dried and milled to get rid of the outer bran for a nice white yellow appearance.
There are several main varieties of rice; short grain and long grain rice as well as the brown and white rice that comes in several different packaged types. You can see mixed rice that has some brown and white rice to give variety to the dishes as well as using wild rice and white rice to achieve the same outcome as well as lower the cost of the wild rice packaged product. Wild rice is usually more expensive due to the natural harvesting and milling processes of the rice by Native Americans in the US.