Cuisinart CRC-400 4 cup rice cooker: It's ok for the price.

My wife wanted a rice cooker. We looked at lots of them. We had fun on our days off searching around at Macy's, Chinatown Oakland and Chinatown San Francisco, Long's drugs, and a few other stores. Little did I know that there were so many brands, styles, variations of functions, and price differences in the vast world of rice cookers. I reeled with wonder. Elisa, my wife was looking for a smaller rice cooker, that didn't have the highest price but not a cheapo if it didn't appear good quality. She was not overwhelmed.

Prices ranged from $19 to $250. Some steamed vegetables and fruits. Some shut off and some kept warming forever and I mean all night until the morning or longer if not unplugged. Some collected excess fat from cooking meats in them. Some had a glass lid for viewing the contents. The materials the cookers were made of varied.

At Macy's I noticed the Cuisinart 4 cup rice cooker (which can actually cook up to 7 cups of rice) was on sale for $39.99 instead of the usual $49.99. I said "look, it's a Cuisinart. It has to be pretty good. That's a name brand."

We had looked at a lot of rice cookers already, and some that looked the best were much more in cost. So we bought the Cuisinart.

It is square with a metal outside surface. It is 7 1/2" by 9 1/2" wide (9 1/2" because of the two handles), and 8 3/4" high with the lid on. The handles, one on each side, are heat resistant.

The inner bowl is teflon coated. One has to be careful to use a plastic or wooden spoon with teflon to avoid scratching it. It cleans easy though. Rice cookers can have inner cook bowls of aluminum, teflon coated metal, glass, or plastic. I did not want aluminum for sure. Aluminun has been found in high amounts in the brains of Alzheimers victims, and though the connection has never been proved, that's enough for me to avoid aluminum cookware. (Rice doesn't have much acid, and the issue is more significant when one learns that oxalic acid-there's a lot in spinach-and other vegetable and fruit acids can dissolve aluminum oxide films off of most aluminum cook pans).

For steaming veggies, it has a stainless steel basket that comes with it which can be place open side up over the cooking rice with the lid on this. You can put water in the cooking pot instead of rice if you only want to steam stuff. The basket has a very small 7/8" wide retractable metal handle in the center of it which requires a bit of effort at first to learn to grab. I use a fork or back end of a spoon and other handy utensils to get a hold of it and pull it up. It's a bit awkward but we don't find it dangerous. The basket is a little difficult to clean but a soaking makes it easy.

The lid is heat resistant glass with a metal rim. The lid can be soaked. A sponge can be used to get into the under side of the lid along the rim where rice water residue collects.

The cord is retractable into the bottom of the cooker. There is no on-off switch. The cooker cord must be plugged in to turn the cooker on and unplugged to turn it off. I believe this was a specific intention for safety so people would not try to clean the machine with only a switch turning it off but electricity still being delivered to the unit. Once plugged in there is a switch for "cook" and "warm" that one uses, and when the rice is cooked, the cooker will switch from cook to warm. There are no bells or alarms to sound when it is done cooking.

I have read that some people have had burned rice with this specific cooker. We have never had burned rice. We measure the water somewhat carefully. Also, if we are going to keep the rice on warm for a long time we add a tablespoon or more of water down the inside to keep the rice moist. Perhaps some of the cookers are defective? I can only say we haven't had this problem.

For the price, I would say that this cooker is acceptable. At times the water will boil over. We have ways to keep this to a minimum. We don't put butter or oil in the rice to prevent that even though we have read this is possible. First we simply don't load the rice to the maximum amount now. My wife says lots of brands of rice cookers boil over. She keeps this boil over to minimum trickle by placing the cooking basket down into the rice cooking inner container.

After reading other reviews and asking around it looks like some of the most popular rice cookers appear to be: Tiger Corporation rice cookers, Krups 652-70 6 cup, Black and Decker cooker-steamer, and several others. Ill favored appeared to be Salton, Panasonic and Sanyo. There are so many cookers out there. My friend with a Black and Decker says it was trouble to use to make rice but it is a great veggie steamer. He got another cooker for rice and just steams veggies all the time in the Black and Decker. My wife says she has seen many Black and Deckers in homes she visited.

We like this rice cooker ok. If it ever wears out would we get a different one? If we did it would probably be a more costly brand. My wife says she would try a brand that doesn't overflow any liquid. She said she is satisfied with this one for now because the rice comes out good, and the price was ok, but will maybe search for a type that doesn't boil over at all.

Update as of October, 2009: I still use this cuisinart cooker for small batches, and have had some spill over with Basmati rice but still minimal problems with other rices, and never had burned rice. 

However, four months ago, we went on an expedition again in search of a larger rice cooker.  We were interested in the well known brand Tiger 10 cup but in the Chinese grocery store the manager, the lead floor guy and some others who worked there all said "You get a Narita. We all use this one.  It will work good for you. Price is good too!" We not being sure what it meant by 10 cups size, they all said that "you put in 10 cups of rice." Then they showed us that the cup for the measuring of the rice that comes with it is very small. Most of them had the 10 cup round shape model. There is a fancier one is sort of oval elongated a little. The lead floor guy had a smaller Narita.
We bought the Narita NRC-100 ten cup cylinder shaped model.  It has a teflon coated bowl so we avoid direct contact cooking with aluminum. It makes good rice, is easy to use, easy to clean, hasn't boiled over, no burned rice and has a indicator cook light and a warm light. There is a fancier model with extra features, but we got the one everyone at Sun Hop Fat used. I still think Tiger is good and the Cuisinart is OK, but we liked the price and the endorsement of the Narita.