AROMADigital Rice Cooker, 4-Cup (Uncooked) / 8-Cup (Cooked), Steamer, Grain Cooker, Multicooker, 2 Qt, Stainless Steel Exterior, ARC-914SBD

This rice cooker has made my meal prep so much easier! It cooks both white and brown rice perfectly every time, and I love that I can steam veggies or meat at the same time with the tray on top. The digital controls are very easy to use, and the delay timer is a great feature when I want dinner ready right when I get home.It’s compact, doesn’t take up much counter space, and looks sleek in my kitchen. Cleaning is also super easy—the nonstick inner pot is a huge plus.If you’re looking for a reliable rice cooker that does more than just cook rice, this is it. Highly recommended!

I always use brown rice and was leery about buying this kind of steamer. I had a vegetable and rice steamer for over 10 years that I loved. It was just an oval one with the clear plastic bowl for the veggies and had a rice bowl you put in it. It had a dial that you turned to the amount of time y9u wanted your food to cook for. It was perfect for brown rice because I could put however much water I wanted In with the rice and then set it for 60 minutes and then later another 15-20. So I was sad when it died and nervous about this one.This one did work very well. I followed the directions, but did add a little extra water. I found that for brown rice, the recommended amount of water was not enough. When I checked on it after it was done, the water had completely absorbed in and the brown rice was a little too hard. Not crunchy or really hard, just not quite right. (I do not like my rice mushy. I have eaten brown rice all my life, along with other grains.) i had to add more water and cook it for a little longer. I did find that some rice was stuck to the bottom, but not burned. I have always used twice as much water to brown rice and cooked it for around 80 minutes. I think with brown rice, it will take some experimenting to figure out what works best for each person. Next time, I’m going to add more water and cook it longer. (only way to cook it longer than 60 minutes is to start it over again, which is easy.) If I end up adding too much water, I will just cook it a little longer.I washed it by hand, and I didn’t put it in the dishwasher. It is small and light so it is easy to put in a cupboard. There are some recipes in the manual for other grains.Anyway, I like this and it did work for brown rice. You just might have to experiment with the cooking time and water amount a little bit.The only thing that bugs me is that the inside pan the rice goes in has two sets of lines and numbers. It has cups on one side and a lower case e on the other. The lines under the e do not match up with the lines under the word cups. The numbers are different too. The ones under the e are 0.2 up through 0.8. I thought maybe the e and the 0.2-0.8 was liters or something but am not sure. I read the manual and googled and couldn’t find the answer. I’m sure it is something obvious, and doesn’t effect anything at all. I’m just curious.Update 12/19/20- After using this rice cooker quite often between now and when I got it, I wish I had bought a different rice cooker. My old Sunbeam one was much better. With the Aroma cooker, the water that is in with the rice is what is steaming. The rice comes out pretty stuck together, no matter how I adjust the water amount. If I follow the directions and only use the proper amount of water, the brown rice isn’t cooked enough and is hard still. Another big disadvantage of the Aroma is that the rice sticks to the bottom and while I don’t have to scrub it off, I do have to soak it for hours and apply pressure with a dish cloth to get it clean. The Sunbeam, which I include a link for so you can see what I’m talking about, had you put water below what you are steaming. It had a bowl for the rice and you also put water in with the rice. The water that was below and not with the rice is what got hot and steamy. It cooked the rice just fine, perfectly in fact. The timer only went for 60 minutes, so I did have to add some more time, but this was no big deal. Often, I would start the rice earlier in the day at around 2 or 3 and then cook it the last 20 or so before dinner. The Sunbeam was also much easier to clean. The brown rice turned out soft, but not mushy, and was not all stuck together. It was perfect. The only thing thing the Aroma has that I like better is that it does have a delay start.(It was this one, but I am not paying this much-https://www.amazon.com/Sunbeam-Instant-4710-Vegetable-Cooker/dp/B07MMG9L96/ref=asc_df_B07MMG9L96/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=385191967814&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=17843216542356355794&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9032623&hvtargid=pla-836131536875&psc=1&tag=&ref=&adgrpid=78082493949&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvadid=385191967814&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=17843216542356355794&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9032623&hvtargid=pla-836131536875)

TL;DR: Buy this, it’s amazing. There’s no need to buy a fancier model, this makes perfect rice, is simple, is inexpensive, and does not take up much room.As someone with extensive experience in the kitchen, both professionally and at home, I cannot imagine anything simpler to cook than rice. There are only 2 ingredients, rice & water and it's not very complicated. With so many appliances in my kitchen, why bother with another thing to buy, use once, and take up storage space? I have enough gadgets that seemed great on paper (air fryers, bread makers, etc.) which did not do the job as well as I could do using traditional methods, and which were often difficult to clean and maintain. So, a rice cooker? A machine to replace the easiest food in the world to cook? Why?My wife had suggested one, after all, all of the restaurants that served rice used them. But, I explained (probably incorrectly) they need to make a LOT of rice; we don't, and that's probably why they use them. Then I came across an article in one of my favorite food magazines, where they test products and came across their review of rice cookers. This rice cooker received the highest rating and was the least expensive of all their tests (and this is a serious chef's magazine, not supported by advertising; their reviews are spot-on and unbiased). And so, I bit the bullet and thought that if it was garbage, I'd just toss it, it was inexpensive enough.As soon as I got this, I wanted to use it and prove to my wife why it was a waste of money and space, and how even a review from an almost always dependable magazine, could be wrong, Of course, I tried some basmati rice because I knew that there was no way that I was going to get fluffy rice with discrete, pieces of rice not stuck together. Once more I would show her who was right.Wrong.After about 33 minutes when the machine said that the rice was done, I opened the lid and, behold, it was perfect! Each grain of rice was perfectly cooked, separate from all the other grains, flowable, and it was the same from the top of the pot to the bottom. Amazing and impressive.Then I decided that the time/temperature etc. of this gadget must have been designed for basmati rice, let's try some short-grain sticky rice for sushi. Damn, how does it know? Again, perfect.I'm now a believer, I admit I was very wrong, and the answer to who needs a rice cooker is: I do and You do.- This machine cleans up beautifully, it leaves no rice on the bottom of the pot.- It is simple to use.- It cooks rice perfectlyMy only issue with it is, as per the attached photos, it is very difficult to see the water line markings on the inside of the pot. This machine is too good, however, to deduct any points for that.Two things to point out:1) The cup that it comes with equals 3/4 of a dry cup measure. It says that in the instructions but on the cup itself, there is a 3/4 full mark. That's a bit confusing but, the measuring cup is 3/4 cup when it is filled to the top. If you fill it to the 3/4 mark, you're weighing out 3/4 of a cup (or a little over 1/2 of a regular cup) so just fill it to the brim.2) There is a steam vent on the lid. It's probably not best to place this under a cabinet; condensation will form on the underside of the cabinet and drip or, worse, penetrate the cabinet wood and get moldy. Keep it in a position so that the vent is clear of anything above it.I highly recommend, despite my previous insistence that nobody needs a rice cooker, this machine. It's amazing.Review of: Aroma Housewares 2-8-Cups (Cooked) Digital Cool-Touch Rice Grain Cooker and Food Steamer