Zojirushi NS-TSC10 Micom Rice Cooker and Warmer, 5.5 cups, Uncooked, Stainless Brown

My friend introduced me to the Zojirushi brand. So far I been loving every moment of it.

My Top 2 features:
1. Extended Keep warm – Keeps Warm my rice for 20+ hours. Its been great since I share rice with my roommate and we both do shift work.
2. Steam function – Keeps my dumplings steamed but not soggy like other steamers. Perhaps it also has humidity sensors for precise steaming? hmmm.

It makes rice in 60 mins and steams in 40. Its on the slower side but good things come for people who wait. You should setup rice cooker first before start cooking. Anyways, I highly recommend this!

We purchased this rice cooker to replace a 3 cup model Zojirushi which is still working well, after 12 years of daily use. We wanted a slightly larger capacity and also wanted the steamer plate to cook veggies and rice at the same time. We tried both a comparable Tiger and a Midea rice cooker, but returned both because the build quality was not up to the Zojirushi standard and the user interface was unnecessarily complicated. The Zojirushi has two timers which are very useful. I have one set for 0800 o’clock for our morning porridge and the second timer set for 1800 hours for evening rice. You can easily set the timers for whenever you want to serve the meal and it produces consistently perfect results.
The slightly higher price for a Zojirushi is fully justified by the high quality of materials and construction, by the simplicity of operation and by the reliability and longevity. You will not regret this purchase.

It’s a good cooker. However, it’s not working anymore only after 2 years! Cannot accept the quality compared to its price. Tried to contact the support department and their website shows that the phone service is not available! What a bad service for the cost of your products! Don’t buy this mark.

I use this rice cooker around 2 to 3 times a week and I am very satisfied with its performance. This is my second Zojirushi rice cooker. I had to give away my first one when I moved to another country. The timer function works well and is very convenient. This rice cooker is very versatile and even has a steamer function.

One thing I noticed is that I have to use slightly less water to cook brown rice compared to my previous Zojirushi rice cooker. But it can be due to the specific variety of the grains that I bought. Nonetheless, it is easy to adjust the water level to suit your taste.

Five stars for this rice cooker!

I’m extremely happy with this rice cooker, and I was very surprised by the difference in quality of the rice. It handily beats both cooking it on the stove top, and cooking it in my Instant Pot. It is not without fault, but I can live with the minor flaws given how good the resulting rice is.

For reference, I made rice using standard tap water and Tamanishiki premium short grain white rice. I rinsed and drained the rice six times before cooking, and I am cooking at high altitude (~5,500 feet).

Pros:
–Rice made in this cooker comes out perfectly cooked every time. It is fluffy and sticky, comes out of the cooker easily, and is great for eating with chopsticks. It is just like high quality rice served at restaurants. When using quality short grain rice, it produces rice that is exactly like what I’ve had in Japan.
–The non-stick inner pot is easy to remove and clean. Unlike cooking in the stove-top or in my Instant Pot, I don’t need to soak the cooking vessel before cleaning, as there’s no rice and very little film left after cooking.
–The cooker comes with an internal reel that winds up the power cord for easy storage. I missed this in the product description, so it was a very nice surprise.
–The inner pot is marked with water levels for various amounts of uncooked rice. This is surprisingly handy.
–The clock is battery powered, so it doesn’t lose the time when unplugged. This is a really nice little touch.
–Operation of the device is dead simple.
–The cooker can hold prepared rice for later use for a surprisingly long time. I’ve tested it as far as 12 hours after preparation, and it was just as good as it was freshly made, complete with a little plume of steam when opened.

Cons:
–The cooker cannot hold the included scoop, paddle, and steamer basket inside itself all at the same time for storage.
It can, however, hold the scoop and the paddle if you store the steamer basket separately. This is a big benefit to the Instant Pot, which can hold its power cord, trivets, ladle, and rice paddle inside itself when stored. (Note that I have the 5.5-cup model. The larger version may be able to do this.)
–The manual says that the cooker can make batches as small as 0.5 cups rice, but the internal pot is only marked for water levels for as low as 1.0 cup uncooked rice. If you want to make a small batch, you must do the water measurement yourself (the amounts are given in a provided manual insert). This could have been avoided with extra lines inside the pot, which would have been so easy to add.
–When this cooker refers to a “cup” of rice, it means the included scoop, not a standard US cup. This refers to a Japanese standard for a serving of uncooked rice (about 2/3rds US standard cup). This isn’t that much of a drawback, but it is important to keep in mind. Don’t lose that scoop!
–The cooking cycle takes about an hour, four times longer than standard rice cooking. This is because the cooking cycle incorporates soaking and steaming time, though, so it is worth it.
–The manual says that it is designed for medium and short-grain rice, but does include substitute water measurements for long-grain. Keep in mind that if you want to cook long-grain, you can’t use the marks inside the cooking vessel to measure the water.

Conclusion:
If you’re considering this device and reading reviews, then you’re probably like me in that you’re wondering if the results are really worth the hype. I think they absolutely are. Now that I have this cooker, there’s no reason at all for me to cook rice any other way. The results simply aren’t in the same league as stove-top or Instant Pot rice cooking. Only you can decide if that’s worth the price of admission, but I can recommend the device wholeheartedly. My only points of dissatisfaction with this device are minor quibbles and nitpicks. It does its job supremely well, and I’m completely satisfied with my purchase.

Updates:
2020-01-20 – I’ve revisited this review to correct an error I made about accessory storage in the original version. I incorrectly stated that the scoop and paddle couldn’t be stored inside the cooker, even with the steamer basket removed. That was incorrect. In fact, the scoop and paddle can be stored inside with the basket removed, but all three cannot be stored inside at the same time. Since writing this review, this cooker has become one of my favorite appliances. The cons I listed in my review all feel like extremely minor quibbles. now. I wanted to change my score to five stars, since I love this thing so dang much, but I think it is still appropriate to keep it at four for the drawbacks, minor as they are. This cooker is on my short list of appliances that I would replace immediately should they fail.

I mean, what can I say? It’s a rice cooker and it does an excellent job of cooking rice. I have had a Zojirushi rice cooker before and given it to my parents when I moved from Asia. So I got another one. In my opinion, Japanese rice cookers (not specific to this brand, I am just used to its operating methods) are THE BEST rice cookers in the world. Trust me, I am an Asian and I have been eating rice all my life so I know the difference between a meh rice cooker and an excellent one. For a much cheaper price, you can get something that turns raw rice into something edible but that’s it. It’s edible, nothing more. While with this artful piece of work, moisture and temperature are controlled in extreme precision so that the right level of moisture makes sure the cooked rice is neither too soft nor too hard and the grains don’t break into pieces (unless you deliberately want to cook porridge) or stick together into blobs, as well as the accurate temperature locks in the juicy mouthfeel and intoxicating aroma when the lid is opened finally. It’s perfect.

Operating the cooker is super easy. Fill rice in the cooker, pour water as instructed by the marks, close the lid and press start. The inner container and the steam cover can both be taken out for cleaning. No weirdly shaped corners or slots, a simple rinse and wipe gets all cleaning done. The cooker can hold up to 5.5 cups of rice and that’s enough to feed an 8-person family. It also offers functionalities to cook sushi rice or rice cakes although I have never used those functions. I assume they work just as well as cooking plain rice. It comes with a non-sticky rice spoon and it sings at the end of cooking. What else can you ask for?

The only downside of this product is probably its price but I think it well worth it.