Home cooks will love to know about KitchenAid’s first Grain and Rice cooker, which both measures and monitors cooking rice, grains, and beans. It dispenses the correct amount of water and simmers for a delicious bowl of oats in the morning or a rice side dish for dinner.
The sleek and modern small kitchen appliance has touchscreen controls along with 21 preset options for cooking rice, beans, oats, couscous, quinoa, barley, farro, and other common ingredients. It uses an integrated scale that can automatically sense the amount of ingredients you have added to calculate the proper water-to-grain ratio. Alternatively, you can use the Custom Cooking Mode to manually add liquids, including water, broth, or milk, and setting the cook time accordingly. You might want to do this if you want mushier rice, for example, or only want to cook beans halfway to further simmer in a soup.
There’s also a Steam Cooking Mode for steaming vegetables, eggs, fish, and meat. It comes with a steamer basket that fits above the cooking pot so you can steam your protein while making the side dish at the same time.
With the Keep Warm function, breakfast, lunch, or dinner can be kept at the proper serving temperature for up to six hours after cooking is done. Conversely, there’s also a Delayed Cook time so you can schedule a cook to begin up to 24 hours in advance, helping with meal prep.
The machine has an up to eight cup capacity and the durable, non-stick cooking pot is dishwasher safe. If you have tougher residue or use a liquid other than water, you can use the cooker’s Steam Cleaninf Cycle to loosen cooked-on food residue before placing it in the dishwasher.
The KitchenAid Grain and Rice Cooker is available for $340.