As we get older we’ve started to realize that some simple changes and substitutions to our diet can help balance out all of the food and drink we eat when we are traveling for blog research. After doing a lot of research to figure out the best way to implement these changes we’ve learned that by cooking brown rice in a brown rice cooker we can cook just a bit healthier at home.
In this post, we share our tips on how to choose the best brown rice cooker for your home. We also provide some advice and tips on how to cook brown rice in a rice cooker. It’s not only important to choose the right appliance for your home but to also know how to use it.
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3 Best Brown Rice Cookers
- Zojirushi Micom Rice Cooker – one of the top rice cooker brands, built-in brown rice setting, steamer function for vegetables
- Aroma Housewares Digital Rice Cooker – 10 cup capacity, doubles as a vegetable steamer and slow cooker
- Oster Digital Rice Cooker – four cooking settings including brown rice, delay timer, and keep warm function, 20 cup capacity
The Best Brown Rice Cooker Reviews 2023
Best Brown Rice Cooker Reviews 2023 – How To Cook Brown Rice
In this post, we share everything you need to know to buy a brown rice maker online. We recommend using Amazon for online purchases for a few reasons.
First, they offer one of the best selections of housewares on the internet at some of the best prices. Second, we try to recommend products that are part of Amazon Prime, which provides purchasers with free and often super-fast delivery. (Get 30 days of Prime free here.)
We provide reviews of individual products below. But, if you are short on time, and are wondering what is the best rice cooker for brown rice, use the handy chart below to see our recommended rice cookers.
The Best Way To Cook Brown Rice
We are getting older and there is just nothing we can do about it. I’ve realized, with the help of my doctor in Spain, that I just can’t eat as I did in my 20s no matter how much I want to.
We still are not at the point where we need to make radical changes to our diet, but we are trying to make healthier choices and substitutions where we can. One of the things we try to do is eat brown rice as an alternative to white rice, at least once in a while.
I’ve never been a fan of brown rice, to be honest. Most of it just seems way too dry. We’ve been trying to find out how to cook brown rice so that it actually tastes good. And, that’s the rub.
It’s been a big problem trying to figure out how to make brown rice taste good. What we’ve learned, after a lot of research, is that using a rice maker really helps to make the best brown rice. It’s more predictable and easy to manage than cooking brown rice on a stovetop.
What Are The Health Benefits Of Brown Rice
People have written volumes about the health benefits of brown rice, so I will merely summarize them here. I assume people reading this already know they should be eating brown rice more than white rice.
My doctor recommended making the switch because I have high cholesterol. This has been a hard pill for me to swallow as Eric and I eat almost the same diet, but my cholesterol is much, much higher than Eric’s. So, we are making a handful of changes to our diets to combat the bad things we do by eating all of the pasta and pizza and wine and gin.
Check out our recommendations for the Best Japanese Rice Recipes, where you can also use brown rice for many of them.
What To Look For In The Best Rice Cooker For Brown Rice
In order to make steamed brown rice in a cooker, you don’t necessarily need a brown rice setting. It used to be that most rice cookers only really made white rice. But, many of today’s top rice cookers cook way more than white rice. They cook brown rice, oats, and grains and even steam meats, fish, vegetables, and dumplings.
Other Features To Consider
All of the rice cookers I recommend include a brown rice setting. If a rice cooker does not include this setting, it just might mean you have to pay a little more attention to the brown rice cooking time and proportions of rice to water.
Other than looking for a brown rice cooking feature, a lot of the same rules apply when choosing a rice cooker in general. You want to look for a tight-fitting lid that doesn’t leak, a rice cooker that is easy to clean, and one that is easy to operate. This can include automatic warming or shut-off feature or a timing feature.
The Right Size For A Brown Rice Cooker
You also want to determine how big a brown rice steamer you need. In general, rice cookers are measured in uncooked cups of white rice. This means that 3 cups of uncooked white rice will equal about 6 cooks of cooked white rice.
Smaller rice cookers generally range between 1.5 and 3 cups. The yields will be a little smaller for brown rice made in a rice cooker. But, they are still good guidelines.
Get The Best Price on Rice Cookers on Amazon
The Best Brown Rice Cooker Brand Reviews For 2023
If you’ve dedicated yourself to healthier living and that includes the goal of swapping out brown rice for white rice, here’s your list of recommended rice cookers. I know I’ve covered a lot already in this buying guide, but here are our individual reviews for some of the best brown rice cookers. They come in a variety of sizes, designs, and budgets.
ZOJIRUSHI RICE COOKER FOR BROWN RICE
Zojirushi is one of the best Japanese rice cooker brands. The Zojirushi 5 1/2 Micom Rice Cooker and Warmer cooks white rice, brown rice, and other grains. It also includes a ton of different functions to make it almost like an all-in-one rice cooker. The Zojirushi is a rice cooker with a brown rice setting. Outside of the brown rice setting, there is a steamer, warmer, retractable power cord, and more.
It also includes fuzzy logic technology making it a more advanced appliance. Fuzzy logic rice cooking means that the machine uses mathematical data to make a judgment call on when the rice is cooked. The rice cooker adjusts for room temperature, amount of rice, type of rice, etc. It’s like rice cooker magic.
Top Pick: We saw loads of restaurants in Japan using this brand of rice cooker for brown and white rice.
TIGER RICE COOKER FOR BROWN RICE
The Tiger IH Rice Cooker is a multi-function, highly intelligent cooker. There is a brown rice setting, but this appliance does way more than that. It is an Induction Heating rice cooker, which is the reason for the “IH” in the product name. Induction Heating is a non-contact method of cooking that uses magnetic forces, or pulses of radio electricity, to cook food.
The Tiger rice cooker also includes its synchro-cooking feature allowing you to cook rice and a “main dish” at the same time. This is pretty cool. It also is a slow cooker, can cook bread, and more. There is also a detachable lid, which is easy to wash, and there is a steam vent to prevent spillage. It cooks up to 5.5 cups of uncooked rice.
AROMA HOUSEWARE DIGITAL BROWN RICE COOKER
The Aroma Housewares Digital Rice Cooker cooks 10 cups of uncooked rice, resulting in up to 20 cups of cooked rice. This makes it a mega rice cooker. But, it also is a slow cooker, food steamer, and more. That said, with the volume and the features, the Aroma Digital Rice Cooker offers a really good value. And, there is a brown rice setting to help cook the best brown rice.
There is also a smaller version. The Aroma 4 Cup Digital Cool-Touch Rice Cooker cooks 8 cups of cooked rice and has a brown rice setting.
OSTER 20 CUP DIGITAL BROWN RICE COOKER
The Oster 20-Cup Digital Rice Cooker makes it easy to cook rice perfectly every time. In addition to a brown rice setting, there are four other cooking settings. These include white rice, steamed, breakfast, and soup. There’s a delay timer and a keep-warm function. This makes the rice cooker quite versatile.
It’s also pretty big making it perfect for a big family. It cooks 10 cups of uncooked brown rice, which results in 20 cups of cooked rice. There is a locking lid that creates a strong seal, which stays cool to the touch. The inner pot is non-stick and dishwasher safe too.
MIDEA MICOM RICE COOKER
The Midea Micom Multi-Purpose Rice Cooker features an easy-to-use one-touch control panel to help cook the perfect rice. Perfect for brown or white rice, the Midea cooks, steams, and automatically keeps rice warm.
The rice cooker uses a honeycomb-inspired surface and a smart temperature sensor to ensure rice is cooked to perfection. Its eight-cup capacity makes it ideal for any household.
To make clean-up quick and easy, the rice cooker comes with a detachable steam valve and upper cover. A preset timer allows the unit to start cooking on its own.
FAQs – Brown Rice Cooker
Rice cookers are versatile kitchen appliances. They can cook all types of rice, including brown rice. In addition to rice, they are great for cooking oatmeal and quinoa. Cooking time for brown rice is generally longer compared to white or jasmine rice. A good rice cooker will have a specific setting for brown rice.
Brown rice is denser than most other rice. Therefore, to cook brown rice to its optimal firmness, you are going to need to add more water. Generally speaking, it’s best to increase the amount of water by 50%. If cooking white rice calls for one cup, add one and a half cups of water for brown rice.
Not all rice cookers are the same, including how long they take to cook brown rice. Compared to white rice, the cooking time for brown rice is longer. On average, a cup of brown rice will take between 50-60 minutes.
Compared to white rice, brown rice is more dense and hearty. This doesn’t necessarily mean you need more water when cooking. After a lot of trial and error, we add approximately 1/4 cup additional water to the recommended amount of water for brown rice. This helps offset any over-measuring of rice but won’t turn the rice into mush.
How We Review And Rate Products ⭐️
We only recommend brands we trust. We try to recommend kitchen products we’ve owned or used personally and we offer alternatives. We choose these alternative products based on recommendations from other food bloggers and chefs, sommeliers, and winemakers.
We conduct thorough research on the company, how the products are made, and whether they are a good value for home chefs. This allows us to offer competitive analysis, provide pros and cons of various products, and ensure you are purchasing quality products for your home.
- Some of the kitchen brands we love the most include 360 Cookware, UnoCasa, Calphalon, Ninja, and Instant Pot.
- For wine and drink products, we love Wine Enthusiast, VinGarde, and Danby.
- We often recommend purchasing products from Amazon because of the variety of kitchen and homeware brands they carry.
- Sometimes, we recommend buying a product directly from the manufacturer when we know it’s a brand we trust.
Learn more here.