RICE COOKERS, come funzionano e cosa sono ^^

The staple food of the Japanese is rice. There's nothing more appetizing than fluffy, shiny gohan, or boiled rice, that's been freshly cooked in water. Making gohan is incredibly easy if you have an electric rice cooker. Rice cookers are being improved all the time, and they're loaded with technological tricks to make delicious boiled rice

THE INVENTION OF THE RICE COOKERS


a panasonic rice cooker

The next big turning point for electric rice cookers came in 1988, when home appliance maker Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., a longtime leader in the development of rice cookers, created the first induction heating (IH) rice cooker.
Until then, electric rice cookers had used direct heating, a method in which the heat is delivered to the inner pot by thermal conduction. The heat applied to the rice was weak compared to that of gas-powered products, and it was said that gas cookers were better than electric cookers. The IH system was invented in the hope of making electric cookers better than gas ones.

Here's how an IH cooker works. An electric current is passed through coils around the pot. This produces a magnetic field, which in turn produces an electric current in the pot's metal. Metal heats up when an electric current runs through it, so the entire pot quickly rises to a high temperature and cooks the rice evenly.
At first it was thought that IH rice cookers may not sell very well, because the IH system was rather expensive and consumed a lot of electricity. But they actually proved very popular; many people wanted cookers that could make rice tastier, even if they cost a little extra. Other manufacturers soon released their own IH models, and today more than half of the rice cookers sold across Japan are of the IH variety.
Unlike other types of cookers, with an IH cooker there is no need to soak the rice in water before cooking it. All you need to do is add the right amount of water, using the lines inside the pot as your guide, and choose the settings you want (such as how firm you want the rice to be). The final trick for making the rice as tasty as possible is to gently mix it around as soon as it's done to let any extra moisture evaporate.

Reproducing the Taste of Stove-Cooked Rice

Water in the small cup in the top right is heated to become high-temperature steam. (Panasonic)
The inside of a hot-steam rice cooker (Panasonic)

The quest for better taste continues today, and various manufacturers keep coming out with new models. The latest IH rice cookers even have IH coils in the lid, so that the inner pot is heated at high temperature from all around. The result is rice that tastes as if it's been cooked on a traditional kamado stove. Innovations have also been made in the materials and shapes of the inner pot to achieve better heat generation. Other technologies developed by manufacturers include pressurizing the rice with the steam that's generated during cooking, which gives the rice a stickier, fuller consistency, and applying ultrasonic vibration to help the rice absorb water better.
In 2003, Matsushita developed a high-temperature-steam IH rice cooker that brings out the sweetness and aroma of rice by using very hot steam at 130 degrees Celsius (266 degrees Fahrenheit). There seems to be no end to the race to develop better and better rice cookers

Edited by yurippe_watanabe - 9/5/2006, 09:38

Electric rice cookers can do many things besides cooking rice. With a rice cooker, it's easy to make cakes and breads, stewed dishes like beef stew, and steamed dishes like dumplings. There are even cookbooks full of recipes that use the rice cooker. Rice cookers have grown into versatile cooking devices.
How is the rice cooker doing overseas? Electric rice cookers are used in other countries where rice is eaten a lot, especially in Southeast Asia. But most of the products used in these countries have only the cooking function.
Matsushita, though, sells rice cookers designed specifically for overseas customers, aptly named the World Series. About eight million units of this best-selling series have been shipped to a total of 45 countries and regions. The requirements of a good rice cooker depend on the country, because different kinds of rice are eaten in different places, and dishes made with rice vary from one region to another.
The World Series rice cookers were created so that they could be used even in countries where rice is not the staple food. The basic design is the same in every model, and the functions are simple. But modifications have been made to satisfy the needs of customers in each country, including a glass lid that allows the user to see inside while the rice is cooking and various attachments, such as a steaming basket. In the United States the World Series rice cooker is often used as a steamer. Other manufacturers export rice cookers too, though theirs are high-performance models that mostly target Japanese people living overseas.
Japan and the rest of Asia are increasingly a focus of global attention, and rice is a central part of Asian food culture. Maybe soon everyone around the world will use an electric rice cooker to cook delicious rice every time