Is the Instant Pot rice cooker the best addition to our kitchen?
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Rice Cooker Introduction and Quick Summary
We bought our White Tiger rice cooker about three years ago, thinking it would be a nice addition to the equipment we use in the kitchen every now and again. Since then, we’ve used it at least three days a week, and we’ve realised that a good rice cooker should be an essential addition to any home cook’s kitchen! Instant Pot contacted us and asked if we would be willing to review their 12-cup Instant Pot rice cooker. With its slow cooker features and greater control over rice cooking, we were very interested to see how it fared against our basic White Tiger rice cooker. Then we saw that the price point on both Instant Pot’s website and Amazon is currently making it an absolute steal!. See our quick review below for our results, and then keep reading for the deep dive.
What we loved about the Instant Pot Rice Cooker:
The 12 cup option is a great size for 2-4 people, and it doesn’t take up a huge amount of room in the kitchen compared to other brands like Ninja.
There are different settings for cooking both white and brown rice, plus additional slow cooking options. You can also manually set a timer or set a delay and a keep warm function.
It has a funky carbohydrate reduction feature that takes some of the less healthy stuff out of the rice.
The rice cooker comes with a steamer tray for things like dim sum
It is very, very easy to keep clean, with everything apart from the main rice cooker dishwasher-proof
It is at a great price point compared to other brands.
What we would improve about the Instant Pot Rice Cooker:
The instructions are all online, and some of the QR codes didn’t link anywhere!
It produces a lot of water that gets caught in the lid, so the first use meant we created a soggy puddle
It will take some testing for rice such as sushi to get the timing completely perfect.
What we loved about the White Tiger rice cooker:
It has one button to turn it on and off (but this is also a negative!)
It was cheaper than the Instant Pot
What we would improve about the White Tiger rice cooker:
It has a really dodgy electrical circuit which means it often turns itself on if you’re not watching it
None of the implements were dishwasher safe
The rice pot was really thin and dented quickly into use
The cooker would often leave the rice brown on the bottom, even when there was more water than needed
White Tiger Rice Cooker
If you want to buy a White Tiger rice cooker (although we think the Instant Pot is better), then you can find a rice cooker to suit you here.
Which rice cooker would we recommend?
In short, the Instant Pot!
We would strongly recommend the Instant Pot rice cooker. The 12 cup size is perfect for small families, and there is a 20 pot version if you need to scale up. The fact that it is easy to clean, has a steam, slow cook and saute function, and the build quality is excellent means that it easily beats the White Tiger. Yes, it is more expensive, but not drastically so (about £15 more), but it has bags more features and cooks rice beautifully. For the amount of use our rice cooker gets, we would invest more and keep the equipment for longer. The Tiger is smaller and simpler, but the build quality is poor, and the results when cooking rice are inferior, too.
Cooking Sushi rice is easy in the Instant Pot
We love putting the Instant Pot on at around 10.30, giving the sushi time to cool and then having Onigiri for lunch when working from home
The Instant Pot rice cooker review in detail
Our first impressions:
On opening the box, we could see that the Instant Pot had a really chunky, satisfying build quality. It’s not too heavy, but its weight does show that it’s been made to last. Inside there is the rice measuring cup, a rice spoon, a steamer tray and the rice pot itself. Apart from the rice cooker, everything is dishwasher-proof, which our White Tiger wasn’t.
Turning it on, the LED display gives multiple cooking options such as CarbReduce, saute for starting slow cooking recipes off and slow cook, plus the rice cooker options you would expect. We were pleasantly surprised that so many cooking options were included in an entry-level rice cooker. Often these products are slow cookers with a rice function, so to find something low-cost and the other way around was very good.
It sits nicely on the countertop and fits very easily in cupboards. The little carry handles could be better, but the slim profile means it isn’t as cumbersome as some of the products from Ninja, for example. Buttons are touch-sensitive on the rice cooker body, so there is nothing to bang or get caught.
In comparison to the White Tiger, it’s chalk and cheese, as this cooker is very rough and ready, with a wobbly on off button and a rice pot that feels super thin and easy to dent (which we did, many times). The components in the box were the same, but made of much cheaper quality, and none were dishwasher safe.
The Instant Pot price vs the White Tiger price:
The Instant Pot retails at around £79.99 but can be found on the Instant Pot website at £59.99 during deals season or you can find it for around the £49.99 mark on Amazon. This is a bit of a steal as Yum Asia rice cookers are double that price and the simple little White Tiger is around £45 too! Considering you get a rice cooker, steamer AND slow cooker in that price from Instant Pot - it’s a bit of a no brainer.
Using the rice cooker:
The Instant Pot takes about two minutes at the most to setup and get underway. It takes longer to wash the rice beforehand than it does to get the cooker cooking! With the cooker turned on, simply press menu select until the option you want is flashing. Then add your washed rice to the pot, add water (the amount depends on what sort of rice you’re cooking. 1.5x for white, 1.3x for brown, 1.1x for sushi) and then press start. The Instant Pot will then crack on with cooking while you can get back to work, prep dinner or read a book. A timer appears when there is about 5 minutes left on the cooking time and then it will give you a hearty beep when it’s done. Once cooked, the Instant Pot switches into keep warm mode while you finish your meal prep off.
The CarbReduce option is designed for healthy rice cooking - in this mode, you add the rice to the steam tray with the water underneath. The rice cooks just as well, but the carbohydrates are reduced from the grains to provide a lighter finish.
You can also use the steam tray with the steamer setting. This means you can use your rice cooker to cook fish or, as we love, dim sum - perhaps pop some Xiao long bao in there and enjoy afterwards with soy sauce!
We haven’t used the slow cook function, but it was an unexpected and very pleasant surprise to find it as a setting on a rice cooker at this price point. Our previous slow cooker (from John Lewis) died suddenly, and we hadn’t replaced it yet. Now we don’t have to! Often with slow cooking, you need to saute the meat or protein first as slow cooking won’t do the whole job. With the Instant Pot, we have that setting built in, so our rice cooker will also saute meat before moving onto a slow cook setting. Very impressive!
Something that Instant Pot should look at, however, is having the instruction manual purely online. It can be argued that it is more sustainable (although the impact of data storage in the cloud is a massive problem for the climate), but it made the initial start-up just more clunky, especially when there is a whole booklet devoted to the Ts and Cs and legals in about thirty different languages. Also, the QR code on the back of the enclosed booklet didn’t work and took us to a 404 page. The first page QR code did, however, and we soon found how to get going. A simple pamphlet inside covering what the buttons do and how much water to use with the different grains of rice would have been a vast improvement. It’s a small comment on a good product, though, just the finishing details.
The first time we cooked rice:
The first batch of rice we cooked in the Instant Pot was basmati rice for an egg fried rice dinner. Using the measuring cup, we filled it up to the basic amount (one cup) and then after washing the rice and adding it to the pot, covered it with 1.5 cups of water. Closing the lid (which is good and chunky with a lovely pop button), we pressed menu select until we had white rice and pressed start. We then pulled out a chopping board and got on with prepping the rest of the ingredients. The cooker took around 30 minutes from start to finish, and the rice was fluffy and perfectly cooked. We threw it into the wok with the other ingredients and knocked up a cracking dinner.
Note that as the rice steams, the water condenses in the lid. This is mentioned in the manual (but we missed it), you need to be aware that when you open the lid, it springs away from the body and can lead to hot water being flung around the worktop. We know now and open the lid slowly, and it’s not been an issue since.
One cup in the Instant Pot is enough for two people easily as the main part of a main meal.
Cooking rice in the White Tiger cooker:
Comparing this to the White Tiger rice cooker, the first time was reasonably similar; it has a warming feature too, although starting the process was a simple push down of the only button on the machine. One very different thing, however, is that after it switched itself back to keep warm, it then carried on cooking because the button is not well-made enough to move back properly! So we started to smell burning as the rice continued cooking dry. After that, we made sure we turned the power off at the plug after the rice was cooked.
Cleaning the Rice Cooker:
A key requisite for adding any new equipment to our kitchen inventory has to be its ease of cleaning. As we mentioned in our Ninja vs Phillips Air Fryer Review, we get really fed up if a piece of kit is hard to clean or easy to damage, particularly if it has a non-stick coating. So if the Instant Pot was going to replace the White Tiger, then it needed to be easier to clean and more robust.
We can say in comparison that this is the case. The Instant Pot’s rice pot is non-stick, but fully dishwasher safe, and has a thick enough wall that if it got dropped on a worktop, it wouldn’t dent too easily. Unlike the White Tiger, which is thin, harder to clean, has a light layer of non-stick coating and is dented all over from the merest dink. Cleaning after use is a simple case of wiping clean with some hot water and washing up liquid, or if you’ve made a rice meal completely in the pot, popping it in the dishwasher and cleaning on a normal cycle. Cleaning the cooker itself is a simple wipe with a kitchen towel.
Durability and Cleaning is Crucial When Choosing a Rice Cooker
You can see here that the White Tiger rice pot is so thin that it has dented and scuffed. This led to brown patches on the rice as it got too hot and overcooked.
Our conclusion about the Instant Pot 12 Cup Rice Cooker
As mentioned in our quick summary above, we think the Instant Pot rice cooker is a brilliant addition to our kitchen equipment. Alongside the Ninja Airfyer and the Kenwood Chef, the rice cooker is our most used piece of kit, and now that we can also use it for slow cooking and dim sum, we will see it on the countertop all the time.
The Instant Pot is a great option for your first rice cooker. The 12-cup version is perfect for a family of four cooking rice as a side; it’s compact and won’t take up too much room, looks good on the worktop and is really easy to use. Plus it’s at a price point that means you’re getting a bargain packed with features, even compared to Chinese alternatives like the White Tiger rice cooker.
What are you waiting for!
A great choice for cooking rice easily
The Instant Pot is our favourite new piece of kit in the kitchen; it’s used multiple times a week and provides a great result each time.
Instant Pot Rice Cooker: Frequently Asked Questions
What is the 123 rice rule when using a rice cooker?
The 123 rice rule refers to the quantities of grains and water required to make the perfect rice. The rule states that you need 1 part uncooked long grain or medium rice, 2 parts liquid (water or stock) to give 3 parts cooked rice. The rule will vary depending on the type of rice you use; for instance sushi rice will require much less that 2 parts liquid, otherwise it goes very mushy, similarly brown rice will need less water too. The Instant Pot website has a guide on how much water and time to use for different rice varieties.
Should you wash rice before cooking it in a rice cooker?
Washing rice makes a big difference to the quality and fluffiness of the rice when it is cooked. Before adding your rice to the cooker, put it in a bowl, colander or sieve and wash it in cold water. Initially, the water coming from the rice will be cloudy and white, but as you wash it more, the water will become clear. For sushi rice, the minimum you should wash it is seven times before putting it in the cooker. You will then take a lot of the starch out, and the results will be exceptional compared to cooking it unwashed.
Can you cook a complete rice meal in a rice cooker?
This depends on the other ingredients you are going to use in the meal. A vegetarian rice meal, including mushrooms, broccoli and beans, can be cooked from scratch in a rice cooker. Simply add all the ingredients into the pot along with the right level of stock or water, and then set to cook. Your rice will absorb the water, and the veg will steam alongside it. It’s a delicious and easy way to make a meal.
If your meal involves meat, then we suggest cooking the meat separately first, thoroughly and then adding it to the rice mixture before cooking the whole pot.