Boiled rice gives you one type of rice. It is relatively easy, but I know a lot of people tend to want the softer fluffier rice cooked using the absorption-method.
Rice cookers are doing absorption-method cooking. This is slightly more technically complex - the exact ratio of water to rice is important, as is controlling temperature.
I consider myself a reasonably competent home cook. I cook rice fairly regularly on a stove top, but getting the exact ratio of water to rice correct is something I find is very easy to mess up.
Additionally, my current stove is fiddly, and hard to control the exact temperature. Sometimes I will end up with a situation where the rice has fully used all of the water, but is not cooked through, other times I will end up with rice that is fully cooked, but is still quite wet.
When trying to time this with other dishes, it's painful.
I don't have anywhere convenient to store a rice cooker, so I don't have one - but when I renovate my kitchen in the future it will be one appliance I end up getting.
It's not obvious to me how much concern one should generally have about this.
The first article mostly marketing material for a paper and seems to actively avoid actually mentioning real numbers or details.
I think there's a reason for this -- the paper does not do any original research, and only relies on evaluating other papers. They also seem to be talking about the effect on some kind of brown rice for their % reduction numbers.
The second seems better, IMO, but also for some reason adds salt into the mixture. They don't test the salt for the amount of arsenic in it, only noting it's a common household product in Sweden. This alone could be the cause for a significant difference in the boiled-dry vs poured-off results (i.e salt in solution will be partly removed).
I'd want to see better research on this before coming to any significant changes in how a major food staple is consumed.
Not just arsenic but also to remove the starch. Most folks don’t cool down the rice before eating so it’s preferable to remove the starch before eating.
Thanks for the insight. I didn't know what "absorption-method cooking" is so I looked it up online and it's how I cook rice, or at least how I cook rice when it's not part of a dish that has to be cooked as one. A couple of guides I found online even use a normal pot, with a more or less precise measurement of water. In my experience, exact measurements are not something a human palate can do, and I think there is a lot of posturing in recipe writers who insist on such, most of the time - with the exception of baking and emulsions, although even there the variability in the ingredients themselves introduces a lot of uncertainty.
Maybe a rice cooker can make exact measurements, but again I would have to wonder: who was the superhuman tester who detected the perfectly cooked rice, that everyone on earth will indisputably recognise as perfect? For me, cooking is not science and I think I'd feel a bit silly having a scientific instrument for rice cooking. So, I guess, it's not for me.
> exact measurements are not something a human palate can do, and I think there is a lot of posturing in recipe writers who insist on such
To be clear, when I'm saying more precise, I mean in the sense of "a cup of something is whatever fits into the cup in my cupboard", not using ISO standards with accuracy +/- 1 millilitre.
> who was the superhuman tester
Again, I'm talking about the difference between "This is clearly uncooked" dry rice, and "this is no longer rice, it's just vaguely rice-coloured mush".
Both states are relatively easy to achieve with absorption method cooking, because you have a lot more variables to consider. It depends not only on the rice, but the cooking vessel, the stove and it's performance, and a bunch of other things.
Perhaps you don't have this issue and are naturally skilled at this. If this is true then I'm happy for you.
Please, however, do understand that there are many many people however who do have this, and find using a rice cooker a much more convenient tool. Some of them would find cooking rice on a stove with a pot would either be difficult or stressful.
This is the answer to your question: "Can someone explain? Why is a rice cooker needed?"
Just try it. It just a lot more convenient and results are great.
1. Put rice in
2. Put water in.
3. Press a button.
4. Come back whenever you want (exact duration doesn‘t matter since a good rice cooker will keep the rice warm and moist).
Maybe the difference is this.
Boiled rice gives you one type of rice. It is relatively easy, but I know a lot of people tend to want the softer fluffier rice cooked using the absorption-method.
Rice cookers are doing absorption-method cooking. This is slightly more technically complex - the exact ratio of water to rice is important, as is controlling temperature.
I consider myself a reasonably competent home cook. I cook rice fairly regularly on a stove top, but getting the exact ratio of water to rice correct is something I find is very easy to mess up.
Additionally, my current stove is fiddly, and hard to control the exact temperature. Sometimes I will end up with a situation where the rice has fully used all of the water, but is not cooked through, other times I will end up with rice that is fully cooked, but is still quite wet.
When trying to time this with other dishes, it's painful.
I don't have anywhere convenient to store a rice cooker, so I don't have one - but when I renovate my kitchen in the future it will be one appliance I end up getting.