A rice cooker is a great kitchen appliance - just add your water and preferred grains, choose an appropriate cooking mode, and leave it to do the rest. When it beeps, open it up, and you'll have perfectly cooked, fluffy rice ready for dinner with zero effort.
Not all rice cookers are the same though, which is where I come in. I'm TechRadar's homes editor specializing in kitchen tech, and I've hand-picked the best cookers for delicious rice - and much more besides. All of these appliances also include modes for a wide range of other foods, from soups and stews through to rich curries and even cakes.
Best overall
Ninja Foodi PossibleCooker
The Ninja Foodi PossibleCooker produced the best, fluffiest rice of any cooker we've tested to date – and a lot more, besides. It has eight cooking modes, all of which produced excellent results in our tests, and makes a great addition to your kitchen for cooking grains, pasta, and whole meals.
The PossibleCooker has a six-quart pot, which is big enough for a family of four, but won't take up an excessive amount of space on your counter. It's nicely designed too, with a non-stick pot with clear fill lines for rice, oats and pasta, plus a detailed instruction manual describing the best ratios to use for various types of rice and other grains.
Cooking white or brown rice took about 30-40 minutes, and the results were perfect every time, without any tweaking of the default settings. We had great results with Ninja's own recipe for Cajun dirty rice too, which involves browning meat and softening vegetables as well as cooking grains.
Surprisingly, it's also one of the must affordable rice cookers we've tested at full price, and is often available for a discount so you can get it for even less. You'll find all of today's best prices listed below.
Read our full Ninja Foodi PossibleCooker review
Budget-friendly
Cosori 5L Rice Cooker
Unlike the other two appliances in this roundup, Cosori's cooker is designed chiefly for grains, though it also has a few surprises to offer.
It comes with a non-stick pot (which we found incredibly easy to clean during our tests), a ladle, a measuring cup, a standing rice paddle, and a steam basket for vegetables like broccoli. There's also a booklet containing charts to help you add the right amount of rice and water for your preferred grain.
The cooker itself is compact enough for a small kitchen, but unlike the others here, it doesn't let you adjust the cooking temperature. That means rice can sometimes clump together a little, and you may need to experiment a little with cooking times to get the best results. It does the fundamentals well, particularly for the price, but it doesn't perform quite as well as the slightly pricier Ninja Foodi PossibleCooker above.
What really surprised us was that the Cosori 5L Rice Cooker can bake a mean cake. Yes, really. Just mix the ingredients as directed in the cooker's manual, grease the pot, pour in the batter, and select the 'cake' preset. Just over an hour later, you'll have a delicious, moist (if slightly oddly-shaped) dessert to enjoy.
Read our full Cosori 5L Rice Cooker review
Rice and more
Instant Pot Pro
The Instant Pot Pro multi-cooker is super simple to use, and a great option if you like the flexibility of the Ninja MultiCooker, but want more straightforward controls. When we tested it, one of our favorite features was the ability to set five cooking modes as one-touch presets so you can cook your rice and other foods exactly the way you want them in seconds.
There's no avoiding the fact that it's been a tumultuous few years for the company behind Instant Pots. After Instant Brands filed for bankruptcy in 2023, Instant Pot Brands was spun off as its own separate company. No new models have been released for a couple of years, but the Instant Pot Pro is still widely available in both the US and UK - and it remains a great option if you're looking for an easy way to cook rice, pulses, chilli, stews and other dishes to perfection.
Another feature that's particularly helpful for cooking rice is the Instant Pot Pro's safe steam release valve, which helps avoid burns. An audible alarm will let you know when it's time to use it.
Brown basmati rice turned out a little too 'al dente' for our first round of testing, but it didn't take much work to tweak the settings. We also made a curry to accompany the rice, which turned out perfectly, with the meat falling off the bone, whilst also browning well without sticking when we used the sauté mode. An excellent cooker for rice and more, and reasonably priced, too.
Read our full Instant Pot Pro review
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