A few comments from a guy who cooks hundreds of pounds of rice per year in quantities ranging from 1 cup through 25 pound batches. 1) All good brands of rice cookers will form a crust when cooking rice. This crust should have a slight brown color to it. As this slight brown crust forms in the cooking process, it produces an aroma that actually flavors the rice. The chinese save and use this crust to make the "singing" rice that they add to some soup dishes. I regularly cook Jambalya in 15 gallon cast iron pots using 25 pounds of rice. I purposedly try to form a brown crust on the bottom of the pot to add extra flavor to my jambalaya. We Cajuns call this crust the "Gratin". The trick is to get the rice to brown on the bottom of the pot and not burn. I also manipulate the heat in an attempt to cause each individual rice grain to split along its seam....this adds extra mouth feel appeal to the finished product. Cajun jambalya judges look for this grain split in competition cooking. The crust or gratin that forms in a rice cooker pot is very easy to remove. Just add water to the pot and let it soak for awhile and the crust is easily removed with a scrub pad. 2) I use several Hitachi brand electric rice cookers from 8 cup to 23 cup. I highly recommend them. Besides rice, I use them to cook potatoes, dirty rice, and small batch jambalayas right in the rice cooker. One day I will post some of these rice cooker recipes.....they're easy and very good. 3) I also have two Progressive International Corp. Microwave rice cookers which I use most of the time for small batches of rice. Rice is cooked in 12 to 15 minutes. The cooker is made out of high temperature plastic. No crust is formed in this cooker as the temperature doesn't get high enough to form a crust. Since the cooker is non-reactive, unused rice can be stored in the cooker in the refrigerator. To heat up cold rice from the refrigerator just add a little water to the cooker contents and put in the microwave for a few minutes. This cooker is super easy to clean as nothing sticks to the high temperature plastic. They cost from $10 to $15. I highly recommend this type cooker too. (This cooker also works well as a steamer for fresh vegetables.) 4) Water to rice ratio varies with type of rice cooked and personal preferance. I always use long grain rice because I like my rice grains to be separate. For large batches of rice as in Jambalyas I use 1.25 volumes of water per volume of rice. This ratio for long grain rice produces the consistency that I like. Some cooks use a 1 to 1 ratio to produce a drier rice and others choose to use a 1.5 to 1 ratio to produce a softer rice.......personal preference. Use medium or short grain rice for a softer or more sticky finished product. 5) In summary, rice cookers are great at consistently producing excellent rice.....unattended. Buy the type and size rice cooker that is suitable to your needs. IMO every kitchen should at least have the microwave variety. Dan

We use a microwave rice cooker that BF's father (full-blood-cajun-I-can't-understand-a-word-he-says-so-I-just-smile-and-nod-and-have-been-caught-doing-it) sent us. It works perfect for white rice every time. His parents make seafood gumbo, jambalya, and catfish courtboullion that make you scream! Anyway, it's a multiuse gadget too. You can serve in it, store in it in the fridge, reheat in it, etc. When we reheat, we sometimes add stuff like gravy, meat, corn, seasonings, or whatever. I'm going to try to make rice pudding with leftovers in it someday soon. I found another brand new Pampered Chef micro rice cooker at the thrift for 2 bucks! Now we're set, the thing looks like it will last for three generations! BF is teaching me to stay in the kitchen when I cook. I too, have a difficult time with things like garlic bread, toasting nuts, etc. I've begun using the timer for even one minute at a time!! It's easy to get distracted, isn't it? What did you end up doing about your rice situation?

I used to have a rice cooker, just a cheapo one, and it cooked it just fine. It was a Salton. I got rid of it, just because I didn't like the crust it would form at the bottom; not knowing that the crust is a prized part of cooked rice. I now cook rice on the stove and it comes out wonderful, except that I too have to watch it for boil-overs. I have an Aroma single burner induction and a coil electric stove. My induction burner cooks too fast on #1 (and there's no lower setting). I do what I do on the coil stove.......have part of the pot off the heat. This controls the heat (for me).

Dr. Besser's advice really only works for surface arsenic. If the arsenic is the inorganic type drawn up from soil or groundwater contamination, rinsing will NOT work very well. In fact, Consumer Reports recommends cooking 1 cup of rice in 6 cups of water, and pouring off the excess! Rinsing very well, and cooking the rice in extra water and dumping the excess (which unfortunately puts it right back into the environment one way or another), removes at most, about 30% of the arsenic. Things that can help: Sulfur helps eliminate arsenic from the body, so eat foods high in sulfur, such as eggs, beans, legumes and garlic. Eat plenty of fiber every day. Garlic, pectin, selenium, L-Cysteine and L-Methionine, Vitamin C, and Superoxide dismutase (SOD) are all good detoxifiers. Be sure to read up on recommended allowances; some of these are mildly toxic in very large quantities. Have a hair analysis done if you suspect arsenic toxicity. Here is a link that might be useful: Boston NPR: 5 Things You Need To Know About Arsenic In Rice