Zojirushi NS-ZCC10 5-1/2-Cup Neuro Fuzzy Rice Cooker and Warmer, Premium White
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Kitchen and Housewares Reviews of Zojirushi NS-ZCC10 5-1/2-Cup Neuro Fuzzy Rice Cooker and Warmer, Premium White
Customer Review: Great machine but Understand the Capacity
Summary: 5 Stars
I finally convinced my wife to replace the old but still functional single switch rice cooker I'd owned for about 10 years. I have longed for something with an off switch so rice doesn't burn to the bottom when I forget to unplug it. This guy was the ticket.
It seems like a fairly complex machine but its really easy to use once you understand the setup. Its well designed. The pot is easy to clean and the inner lid snaps off for easy cleaning as well.
I have to say the rice it produces is some of the best I have had. I did a side by side cookoff with the old and the new rice cookers. The same rice just seemed to have more consistant texture and better strong flavor. Definatley worth the upgrade since we do lots of rice.
The one drawback I found is with the somewhat misleading specifications. They say this is a "5 cup" rice cooker. So I'm thinking 5 cups=40oz. Plenty big enough for a family of 4. Well its not quite that much. It seems in Asia (on the metric system) their idea of a cup is a teacup. If you look at the picture and see the two little cups next to the machine, it will hold 5 of THOSE cups. Those cups are approximatley 6oz each. So really it is a 4 (American) cup rice cooker, not 5. Of course 3/4 of a cup is about how much rice you'll eat in a meal so one run of this machine should be able to produce rice for 5. If you need more that that consider the NS-ZAC18 10 cup (8 cup) model.
The trick to the machine is to use the little cups that come with it. You measure out a few "cups" of rice and dump it into the pot. Then you add water and fill it up to the graduated mark on the inside of the pot. So if you toss in 2 cups you add water until you hit the 2 cup mark. It has different markings for Brown, White and Sushi rice.
Before discovering the proper way of using the smaller "cups" I used a regular 8oz cup on some Jasmine rice (then filled it to the designated level). It still came out way better than my rice cooker. It was firm but not hard and full of flavor. So if you screw up or loose your little "cup" you can still get great rice as long as the stickness is not absolutely critical to the receipe.
The manual makes a huge deal out of its ability to handle some "no rinse" rice who's milling technology was proudly developed in Japan. They devote pages to the setting and cooking it, but actually its pretty similar to the regular rice, you just use the green cup instead of the clear cup.
All in all this is a great little machine. If you want the best and are willing to pay the bucks this is the one to get. You will not feel your money is wasted.
Update:
Its now 6 years later and countless batches of rice and this little thing is still going strong. The pot has a few scratches from years of continous daily use but its holding up.
We expanded our use of this little gem. I've learned not to think of it as just a rice producing device but as a rice cooker + modified crock pot. My wife started using it to produce porriage and then later soup. She'll pour the ingredients in the night before, set the timer and her breakfast is ready 30 minutes before she wakes up. You can use it for grain soups, porriage, oatmeal and more. We buy packs of Thai flavored rice that say were supposed to cook on the stove. We dump the stuff in and hit go. They come out plenty tastey.
There is a quick cooking cycle that we use a lot. Shaves about 20 minutes off the cook time. Flavor suffers a little (though its still great) but when your in a rush...
Perhaps the most amazing thing however is what it does to brown rice. As a kid I was never fond of brown rice. Too hard and crunch and I was never that big on bran flavor. We got some brown rice and started cooking it in this thing and it was a whole new world. I don't know how it did it but it came out soft, a little chewey and decent tasting. Brown rice was now something worth eating vs avoiding.
So if for whatever reason you are looking to switch to brown rice but not thrilled with the flavor do yourself a favor and get one of these units. It makes it a whole new experience.
We haven't tried steaming anything yet. Maybe when our steamer breaks..
Customer Review: Perfect rice and porridge every time
Summary: 5 Stars
This product rates five stars because it does what it is supposed to: turn out perfectly cooked rice as and when you want it, every time you use it. The non-stick bowl is easy to clean, and the inner lid, while not non-stick, at least pops out easily and gets clean with a little elbow grease, although I would highly recommend spraying it with non-stick spray before cooking anything sticky (like oatmeal). I will say, however, that after reading the reviews here I was expecting the rice this cooker produced to be a revelation. And, in fact, the rice this cooker makes tastes... like rice. Exactly the same as properly cooked rice on the stove top. It's that "properly cooked" part that is the beauty of using a rice maker. No more forgetting the rice is on the stove and boiling the water out or getting the timing wrong. With a rice cooker you add the desired quantity of rice, the appropriate amount of water for the type of rice and the texture you want, press a button and you get perfect rice without ever having to worry about it overcooking. When the water is gone the machine switches automatically to "keep warm" mode and will keep the rice perfectly warm and fluffy for hours. Or you can reheat it if you need it just-finished hot. You can get the same safety zone by baking your rice in the oven, but what a waste of energy. A rice machine takes up less space than a food processor, doesn't heat up the kitchen and uses far less engergy than the oven. So it's a worthwhile investment if you like rice. The real question is whether you need to spend the extra C-note to get a neuro fuzzy cooker.
On the plus side, the neuro fuzzy cooker has two great features a plain-old on/off button cooker doesn't: 1) a timer, so you can put in your non-perishable oatmeal ingredients before you go to bed and wake up to a hot breakfast, or put your rice in the cooker before you start dinner and it will have the rice ready when you tell it to; and 2) settings for different varieties and textures of rice -- brown rice, mixed rice, white rice, porridge, etc. A large number of people have raved about all you can do with a neuro fuzzy cooker if you get "The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook" and, it's true, there are uses you can make out of a neuro fuzzy cooker that you can't get from an on/off style cooker. Turns out, though, that the uses I wanted from my rice cooker (being able to make simple, yet complete, healthy dinners in it) can only be made (per the author) in an on/off style cooker, which has a steaming basket over the rice bowl. So you put rice in the bottom, fish and vegetables or whatever in the top, and a full meal is made in the time it takes to cook rice. On/off cookers don't have a timer, so you can't set a time for the food to be done, but it's not like you can leave fish or milk or other perishable foods alone in the cooker overnight or all day, anyway. And the on/off cookers have a "keep warm" button so you can put your rice in to cook before you go to the gym and still have rice waiting when you get home. It won't be just-cooked fresh, but can you really tell the difference between just-cooked and kept-warm rice? The neuro fuzzy cooker is perfect if you eat a lot of brown rice or make a lot of porridge, but if you just want perfectly cooked rice every time, or just simple meals of rice, veggies and a maybe a little chicken or fish, save yourself some money and get an on/off cooker. Either way, though, a rice cooker will save you ever having to wait for the rice or having to eat overly mushy or undercooked rice. And this cooker, which is perfect for anywhere from a single serving (use your own measuring cups, the minimum this cooker can measure with its pre-marked lines and cup serves two heartily), to enough rice for side servings for up to a dozen people, does the job supremely well.
Customer Review: Great for some things, disappointing for others
Summary: 4 Stars
I grew up with one button rice cookers. The kind I liked the best was one where you would put water on the outside of the rice pot as well as in the inside of the pot with the rice and then press the button. I don't think they make those anymore. Nowadays you have to keep the outside of the pot dry. Kinda a pain after you got it wet washing the rice. Back when I was growing up we made delicious rice, rice porridge, steamed sausage over rice, steamed chicken and vegetables in broth, bean soup, etc. using the simple one button rice cooker. The trick for some of the dishes is to run the cook cyle twice to cook longer.
I mention all this to explain why just having a rice cooker cooking different things doesn't totally impress me. I'm used to having one that is simple to use and versatile.
With this background, I was a little bit disappointed in the ZAC10 rice cooker although I still think it is an excellent product.
This neuro fuzzy is CUTE. And it makes DELICIOUS oatmeal. It also makes cheaper rice taste better. The keep warm feature works perfectly -- no making a crust. I use the timer feature for oatmeal in the morning - very nice to have.
But it is also awfully SLOW. I'm used to the rice cooker cooking faster than the stovetop method but this one is just as slow if not slower. For 1 small cup of rice it takes 40+ minutes. The machine I grew up with took 20 minutes. Even the quick cook feature on this machine takes 30 minutes.
Theoretically you can't use this as a steamer according to the Ultimate Rice Cooker cookbook I also bought. That's too bad since I am used to steaming things in a rice cooker. I will play around with it though and see if that's really the case.
I am still torn about whether to get this for my motherinlaw this Xmas. She loves oatmeal but cooked in milk so the timer feature won't help her. But still, it makes delicious oatmeal without her having to stand and stir. And it keeps it warm for a long time. What's making me hesitate is that she doesn't eat rice that often and the buttons in the front are rather daunting. (It really isn't as complicated as it looks though) Also the manual has no good recipes. It doesn't even tell you if you can make oatmeal with milk or not in it. (You can.) On the web they have some and if I were to get this for her I would definitely print out some recipes to go with it. This would be an expensive gift not to be used.
If you eat rice alot or like rice, oatmeal, porridge, that kind of thing... a rice cooker is a must and this one is a great one. Just realize that if you're use to a one button rice cooker you'll be giving up simplicity.
FOLLOW-UP:
I have demoted this from a FIVE star to a FOUR star product. It still makes wonderful rice but disappointingly it doesn't handle oatmeal cooked in milk (1% fat). I've tried it three times now, two times on porridge cycle and this thing made a COLOSSAL MESS. Hubby said it's like a baby puked all over it, inside and out. The thing spewed oatmeal which stuck and dried everywhere (I got to it two hours after it went on keep-warm). Even though the inner part of the lid pops out, it still took nearly an hour to clean up the nooks and crannies of the thing. I definitely suggest watching it if you cook oatmeal with milk and maybe even opening it up several times to release the steam. Better yet, do it on the stovetop. Too bad because the oatmeal still left in the pot that it didn't spew out tasted fantastic.
To be fair to the recipe, I should say I used quick cook oats (1 minute type) instead of the steel cut slow cook type oatmeal. Maybe that made a difference. BUt if so, too bad because I still have a lot of the other kind of oatmeal to use up.
Customer Review: Brand New Model!
Summary: 5 Stars
This ZCC-10 just came out in March 2005 and replaces the ZAC-10. NOTE: All reviews prior to this one are actually for the older model. While I was researching rice cookers recently, I called Zojirushi to ask about the altitude issue that had been mentioned as a problem to fuzzy logic type cookers. At that time, they told me this new ZCC model was about to be released which fixed that and would work accurately at higher altitudes. I waited to order it, and it works GREAT. I live at 4,000 ft. elevation and both Basmati rice and brown rice turn out better than any I've ever made before--absolutely perfect. I had dinner guests gushing about the wonderful rice without having any idea I had this cooker! It literally takes about 2 minutes to figure out how to use the ZCC-10. You can choose white rice with sub-settings of sushi, soft or hard. There is also a quick cook cycle, one for mixed grains, plus sweet, semi-brown and brown rice, plus a cycle for pre-washed rice (probably only available in Japan). After cooking is done, the machine plays its little tune and shifts into a warm cycle (up to 12 hrs) and if you want to go beyond that, there is an extended warm cycle, plus a reheat setting. While in warm, you can open it up at any time, get some rice, and close the lid again and the warm cycle continues until you unplug it. Cleaning is quick and simple...in fact, although I removed the inner lid to clean (it easily snaps in and out) there was actually not much more than a few drops of condensation on it. The rice bowl cleans up with no effort, nothing sticks. The rice produced by the ZCC-10 is a gazillion times better than my previous little Hitachi cooker (switch type). The little melody is amusing...Twinkle Twinkle Little Star plays when you start the cook cycle, and Amaryllis plays at the end. You even have a choice of switching between high melody, low melody or beep. The buttons on the front are large and very easy to read. The unit looks like a cute little space ship with a handle--so very Japanese! I previously heard some complaints about not all Zoji cookers coming from Japan, but this one was definitely made in Japan, for what that's worth. SIZE: This is called a 5.5-cup model. The most I have made was 3 Zoji cups (be sure to measure using their little cups, not your usual measuring cup!), which didn't entirely fill the bowl and which was plenty for 7 people to have quite a lot. I probably could have done 4 cups, maybe more. They call it a 5.5 cup cooker, which must mean 5.5 of THEIR measuring cups. That would be a fair amount of rice. As a complement to this cooker, I also recommend the "Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook", sold right here on Amazon. Great stuff in it to use in this cooker and lots of rice/rice prep/rice cooker information! Many or maybe even most recipes require fuzzy logic type cookers, by the way. I discovered you can use a rice cooker to make all sorts of surprising things, such as oatmeal and other grain cereals, rice pudding (and other puddings), a really amazing variety of different things! I was hesitant to spend this much on a rice cooker and thought about it for months, but I can enthusiastically say it's worth it, especially if you plan to use it for more than just cooking plain old rice. Everyone I spoke to in kitchen type stores unanimously said Zojirushi was the absolute best, and now I know why!Customer Review: Set it and forget it. Convenient gizmo.
Summary: 5 Stars
Let me first say that I really like this thing. It's the height of convenience and simplicity. If you can fill a cup with rice and pour water, you're done. And the timer function is great because you can set it up so that the cooked rice is waiting for you when you get home for dinner.
And on top of that, it does steel-cut oatmeal so much better than stovetop. It's a real hassle to tend to steel-cut oats the whole time they're cooking, with the boiling up and having to adjust the moisture and keep stirring and all. It's prohibitive. So this Zojirushi makes it so much easier to have great oatmeal. It's lovely to set it up the night before and wake up to the smell of hearty oatmeal cooking in the kitchen, especially during cold weather. I add applesauce and cinnamon to mine before I close it up to cook. Special treat.
Also the bowl is effortless to clean. And it's not a big deal to clean the removable lid from inside the unit either. Pop it out, wipe wipe, wipe wipe, done. Same for the little steam vent at the top of the unit. Just wipe it after each time. Not a big deal.
But the one point where I veer away from some of the other reviews here is that the rice this thing turns out is just amazing. I'm no connoisseur, but I eat rice about once a week. This machine makes good rice, but from reading these reviews, I was expecting it to be so much better that it would be almost like a new and wonderful food I'd never had. Turns out it's just rice. I'm wondering if maybe I was just a good stovetop rice chef prior to getting this machine, so the difference wasn't as noticeable as it was to the people who describe episodes of burned rice. I've never burned rice on the stovetop. It's a pretty easy process, this is just easier.
One drawback is that it takes longer to cook in this thing than on the stove. I call it an even trade since I don't have to tend it or do multiple steps, but it does mean that dinner prep takes longer unless you think ahead and use the timer function. Oh and don't get me started on brown rice. Made that one night, figured it'd take about an hour. It was closer to two. Sheesh! Didn't eat until late.
So overall I think this is an excellent item to have, and I wouldn't go back to stovetop, just because of the convenience. Just maybe add a grain of salt to some of the other reviews here. If cooking rice on the stove is no big deal for you, and you get good results, you'll get somewhat better results with this thing, but not shout-it-out-from-the-rooftops better.
By the way, I bought that rice cooker cookbook that several people here mention. Used it to try brown, black, and even Bhutanese red rice in my cooker. But I'm pretty much back to just white rice now. Tried its oatmeal recipe too. But now it sits on a shelf. For lazy chefs who cook basic dinners, it might be a bit of overkill. If you're basically a white rice person, you'll fiddle with the cooker's various settings a few times until you get it the way you like it, and then you're pretty much in a groove, basically just using it for white rice, using the same settings every time. It can do a lot more than that, but I bet most people just want it to cook rice. No need for a cookbook. More creative kitcheners would obviously get more use out of such a book.