Chris Null of Yahoo! Tech and Mark McClusky, one of my old mentors at Wired, did a side by side shootout of Rice Cookers. They actually went and dethroned what I always considered the king of the long grain, short grain, and everything in between: The Zojirushi, known to me as the Hattori Hanzo in its class. Apparently its ability to start cooking at a set time, or its ability to make rice to different degrees of hardness, were meaningless after it prepped rice inconsistently between batches.

The winner? A Sanyo that doesn't even beep when its done. The Zojirushi was even topped by a Cuisinart. Just goes to show ya: even if you eat 100 pounds of rice a year, you can still learn something new about how to cook it. Asians everywhere, I suspect, will share my surprise. But a fair fight is a fair fight, and I assure you that those two know how to test gadgets. –Brian Lam

Go With the Grain [Wired]

Contact information for this author is not available.