The Types Of Rice You Should Never Put In A Rice Cooker

The automatic rice cooker was perfected back in the mid-20th century, and it's now a handy little gadget to keep around your kitchen. A simple version of the gizmo doesn't do a whole lot besides boil and steam the rice inside. Though it's possible to bake cake in a rice cooker if you're careful, it's not always built to handle things beyond standard white rice, like jasmine rice. So are there any rice types that don't cook well in there? We asked Maricel Gentile, chef and owner of Maricel's Kitchen, as well as the author of Maricel's Simply Asian Cookbook.

According to Gentile, "Rice cookers work best for whole, dry grains that absorb water at a steady rate. You should skip instant rice and very delicate or specialty rices like risotto rice if you want the best result." Compared to normal rice, instant rice is pre-cooked and dehydrated, and it doesn't take more than a few cups of water at most to rehydrate it. Instant rice in a rice cooker will absorb more water than it needs, which can overcook it and turn mushy as all the starch inside pours out. 

As for risotto, Gentile explained that it needs "special attention," and stovetop cooking lets you do that more easily. "Risotto rice, like Arborio, releases starch slowly and needs frequent stirring to create that creamy texture. A rice cooker does not stir or allow gradual liquid control," she said.

Instant rice and risotto are the two big nos for rice cookers, but Maricel Gentile warned that you should also be careful with glutinous rice, which is often known by its other names: sticky rice or sweet rice. Gentile explained that sweet rice can be cooked in a rice cooker, but it absorbs water quickly and releases a lot of starch, so you need to lower your usual water ratio to keep it from getting gummy. It sounds simple, but getting the measurements wrong is a common rice cooker mistake. Some fancier rice cookers do have a specific setting for sweet rice, but the basic ones only have "heat" and "warm" settings, which won't give you enough flexibility with water and temperature.

Instead, Gentile said jasmine rice, short-grain Japanese rice, medium-grain rice, and most long-grain white rice are ideal for rice cookers. "These rice absorb water evenly and benefit from the sealed, steady heat of a rice cooker," she shared. " [...] When you choose the right rice and the right method, everything else on the plate tastes better."