Zojirushi NS-TSQ10: The best rice cooker to buy
If you want the best rice cooker there is, then the Zojirushi NS-TSQ10 is difficult to beat
Zojirushi isn’t a household name in the UK, but its line of rice cookers has a devoted following in Japan, across south eastern Asia and throughout the US. While the high price of the NS-TSQ10 seems unjustifiably extravagant at first glance, we came away deeply impressed by almost every aspect of this rice cooker.
Design and features
The NS-TSQ10 has a capacity of 990g of rice, so this should be enough for all but the biggest family feasts and dinner parties. This is an attractive appliance thanks to its dark grey and metallic colour scheme, while a fold out carry handle means you can easily move it if need be. The onscreen menu seemed odd at first, with the options arranged in a rectangle rather than as a list, but we were soon navigating around this unusual menu system with ease using the buttons on the control panel.
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Cooking performance
While long grain rice took a lengthy 44 minutes to cook, the results were almost impeccable. The grains were fully separated, yet soft and moist too. Our batch was cooked almost perfectly even with only a small amount slightly firmer than the rest.
Short grain rice was slightly too moist, but this was a minor flaw and was still superior to almost every other rice cooker we’ve seen so far. Cooked in just under 48 minutes, our two portions of short grain were consistently fluffy and soft. This wasn’t surprising as the difference in weight before and after cooking was substantial – the weight of the rice and water went from 815g before cooking to 643g afterwards. This is a huge change of 23.6%.
Keep Warm mode worked flawlessly, with both long grain and short grain rice. Even after being kept overnight for a total of 12 hours, both types of rice looked and tasted as if they had just been freshly cooked. Cooking a batch of high-quality rice at dinner time and then saving some for lunch the following day is one of the most useful conveniences of a rice cooker, yet the NS-TSQ10 is one of the very few we’ve seen capable of managing it.
Just as welcome was the almost complete lack of mess. Some stray flecks of rice and a few drops of condensation lined the rim of the bowl and the metal inner seal of lid, but this was easy to clean up – especially as the inner lid can be removed fairly easily by pressing down on it and then pulling it away from the rest of the hinged lid. The removable steam vent detaches quickly and easily from the outside of the lid for even easier cleaning.
Verdict
If you eat rice regularly but want all the hassle taken out of cooking it, then the Zojirushi NS-TSQ10 is an essential purchase. It’s a worthy winner of our Best Buy award.
