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In January, Timothy Wu’s electrical rice cooker began ailing. His Zojirushi NS-ZCC10—a white, shoebox-size machine that performs a cheerful jingle when its contents have been steamed to fluffy excellence—wasn’t retaining rice heat for so long as it used to. Following 1 / 4 century of virtually each day service, the machine was so liked that his two younger daughters (certainly one of whom had years in the past dubbed herself “rice monster”) requested a funeral. Just a few nights after the rice cooker’s demise, the household gathered across the machine, lit candles, and made speeches about what it had finished for them. This trustworthy companion had accompanied Wu by means of not less than 4 cities, a wedding, the delivery of two youngsters, and jobs in each the Obama and Biden administrations, outliving as many as 10 telephones, a number of computer systems, and a number of vehicles. “There are usually not that many issues in life that are totally dependable, in some methods utterly selfless, and so giving,” Wu, a professor at Columbia Regulation Faculty and a outstanding critic of Huge Tech, informed me.
The rice cooker, in spite of everything, is an ideal equipment in principally each means: a tabletop system that tells you what it does (cooks rice) and does what it says it’s going to (cooks rice) with ease and with out fail. You measure grains and water in a ratio supplied by the cooker, pour the whole lot into its interior pot, shut the lid, and press a button. Inside half-hour or so, you should have the best bowl of rice—pleasantly chewy, with grains that aren’t clumpy or dry. The machine automates an in any other case fiendish course of: “When you’re cooking rice with a stovetop and a pot, you both have to make use of a timer or it’s important to actually fastidiously discover when the water has stopped simmering,” the chef and creator J. Kenji López-Alt informed me. “And it’s actually tough to do this by eye.” Only a bit an excessive amount of or too little water, rice, warmth, or cooking time can produce a gloopy or burnt mess.
Not solely is the automated electrical rice cooker good, but it surely has been so for many years—maybe for the reason that first mannequin went on sale, in 1955, and definitely since engineers harnessed extra superior applied sciences within the ’70s and ’80s. Many fashions available on the market at the moment work in functionally the identical means as those offered generations in the past, and in some instances, the similarities go even additional. Wu’s new rice cooker, additionally a Zojirushi NS-ZCC10, is totally indistinguishable from the now-deceased one he purchased within the ’90s: a spitting picture in form, buttons, elephant emblem, and all. The completed rice is simply nearly as good. A lot trendy expertise, particularly in disruption-obsessed Silicon Valley, guarantees that over time it’s going to enhance dramatically and inevitably—a pc that was the scale of a room in 1955 can now match into your pocket. However the rice cooker hasn’t modified a lot in any respect, as a result of it hasn’t wanted to.
The truth that this rice cooker labored for 25+ years of fixed utilization with out fail makes me need to reward its engineers — and the truth that the brand new mannequin is an identical to the outdated suggests they knew they received it proper. pic.twitter.com/C13sxEveQC — Tim Wu (@superwuster) January 31, 2023
The easy, static class of rice cookers shouldn’t be particularly widespread in the US, the self-proclaimed residence of innovation and progress the place so many different devices have made it huge. The common American doesn’t prepare dinner a lot rice in contrast with a lot of Asia, and solely 13 p.c of American houses use a rice cooker. However these marvelous machines are close to ubiquitous in a lot of East and Southeast Asia, the place rice is a staple: Within the rice cooker’s birthplace, Japan, 89 p.c of multi-person households personal one.
Learn: J. Kenji López-Alt thinks you’ll be high quality with an induction range
This kitchen masterpiece was developed because the nation was rebuilding after World Battle II, when a Toshiba salesman promoting a washer to housewives discovered that making ready rice 3 times a day was extra arduous than doing laundry. The standard Japanese technique of cooking rice, in earthenware pots often known as kama over a range referred to as a kamado, required continuously watching and adjusting the warmth. Realizing a enterprise alternative, the salesperson proposed that an engineer design one thing for Toshiba that would prepare dinner rice robotically. The engineer knew little about cooking rice, however he requested his spouse, Fumiko Minami, to assist. She spent two years finding out her kama, different rice-cooking home equipment, and numerous prototypes, because the historian Helen Macnaughtan has documented, ultimately arriving on the method that also powers the only fashions at the moment.
At its core, the best kitchen equipment requires only a thermometer and a warmth supply. Assuming your proportions are proper, rice is absolutely cooked when all the water within the pot has been absorbed or evaporated. To trace that, the primary Toshiba rice cookers used a bimetallic strip that senses when the pot surpasses 212 levels Fahrenheit, the boiling level of water, and turns off the machine. The equipment’s inside temperature can solely surpass that time at when all of the liquid is gone and, due to this fact, the rice is completed. “It’s a foolproof means of cooking rice that’s far more dependable than something you possibly can do in a pot on the range,” López-Alt stated.
After testing the ultimate prototype close to a steaming rest room, below a scorching solar, and in an ice warehouse, Toshiba launched the primary rice cooker in December 1955. In Japan, the expertise was instantly miraculous. Inside a yr, Toshiba was producing 200,000 rice cookers a month. By 1960, half of Japanese households had one—and the equipment was spreading to neighboring nations. After buying a rice cooker, “folks felt like they weren’t that poor anymore,” Yoshiko Nakano, a professor of administration on the Tokyo College of Science and the creator of The place There Are Asians, There Are Rice Cookers, informed me. In her analysis, Nakano discovered that for working-class households throughout East Asia, the brand new machines had been extra life-altering than televisions or fridges, releasing many ladies from time-consuming drudgery.
The electrical rice cooker has developed from Minami’s authentic design. Producers rapidly added a operate to maintain rice heat for a lot of hours, obviating the necessity to prepare dinner a number of batches a day. In 1979, they launched microchips, which might modulate temperature and prepare dinner time based mostly on components together with the quantity and sort of rice. Then got here induction heating in 1988 and strain cooking in 1992. Many of those steps ahead in expertise have actually introduced the rice cooker again in time—making it higher emulate the normal kamado cooking technique, says Marilyn Matsuba, a advertising and marketing supervisor at Zojirushi. Microchips modulate temperature in a technique much like what folks used to do manually; induction heating and strain cooking mimic the normal earthenware pot and its double lid. Over time, rice cookers have additionally develop into higher at dealing with some varieties not generally present in East Asia, resembling long-grain basmati.
Producers have continued to tweak and enhance their most superior fashions, which might value greater than $700. Zojirushi’s costliest rice cooker accepts suggestions on the standard of every batch of rice and makes use of AI to personalize its cooking cycle to every consumer’s tastes. And native variations exist, resembling a machine that makes tahdig, the crispy-bottom Iranian rice dish. However many common rice cookers available on the market at the moment, particularly within the U.S., nonetheless use the decades-old thermometer or microchip strategies. And even the microchips could also be pointless. The best-rated, least expensive fashions on Amazon, which run about $20, are thermometer-based, and numerous comparisons from meals writers and publications discover that the straightforward fashions work nice. López-Alt, who eats rice many instances per week and is understood for testing recipes and tools with scientific rigor, owns an old school rice cooker. Even Matsuba, of Zojirushi, informed me that whereas the corporate’s newest applied sciences do make higher rice, “maybe the cost-benefit isn’t as clear to the patron,” particularly to American shoppers who don’t scrutinize the trivialities of cooked rice as folks do in Japan.
As an American who eats loads of rice, I needed to determine for myself. This weekend, I examined an outdated, bimetallic-switch-based rice cooker in opposition to a microchip-wielding Zojirushi, which sells for greater than $200. The flamboyant machine’s rice was a bit fluffier, the straightforward one’s rice simply barely mushier. However the far-cheaper expertise cooked rice virtually as nicely in 19 minutes versus the Zojirushi’s 46-minute cycle, which soaks the rice beforehand and lets it steam briefly as soon as completed. With out a number of side-by-side samples, I’m undecided I’d have observed a distinction. My verdict: good since 1955.
Learn: The Immediate Pot is not going to clear up all of life’s issues
That’s doable as a result of the rice cooker is a modest device, aspiring to a easy, millennia-old activity. Not solely are its mechanics an anachronism, then, however so is its spirit—it’s not making an attempt to cram a number of features right into a single product, neither is it maddening to make use of. Evaluate the rice cooker’s simplicity to the seven-in-one Immediate Pot, the Omni Prepare dinner (a blender that may sous vide, self-clean, and knead, amongst 18 different features), or the Ninja Foodi (an air fryer–strain cooker chimera)—a category of kitchen home equipment that search to interchange your complete kitchen. Within the pursuit of doing the whole lot, these devices hardly ever do anybody factor in addition to we wish, maybe why the Immediate Pot’s recognition is plummeting. “Many different applied sciences in our life are irritating and infrequently have their very own agendas; they need to promote merchandise to us or do different issues,” Wu informed me. “The rice cooker is simply selflessly serving.” Having a product that’s easy and works nicely each time is a vanishingly uncommon expertise, in thekitchen or outdoors it.
Just a few months after the funeral, over Easter weekend, Wu and his household took out their retired Zojirushi. His daughters thought “it was lifeless,” he stated, “but it surely’s not”—solely the keep-warm operate had degraded. When he efficiently cooked a pot of rice with the outdated rice cooker, “the kids had been overjoyed, and so they cheered.” It was a resurrection, if solely of kinds: A single rice cooker can falter, however the rice cooker can by no means actually die.