Aren’t you curious? Can a rice cooker bring out umami in rice? I wanted to know more, yes I did, so I took the Zojirushi NL-GAC10/18 for a workout and tried not to get overly ambitious while testing some of its features. Our family cooker is the IH (induction heating) model so it’s in a higher price range, but I was surprised to see how well this cooker did, especially with that umami setting.

Bear in mind the umami setting takes over an hour to cook rice, so time your dinner accordingly. Believe me, it’ll be worth the wait. I was using the bigger 10-cup version, so the first thing I wanted to try was the minimum amount of rice. Can it still cook rice perfectly with only 2 cups? Yes it did, and it did it well.

The rice really was “sweeter” and cooked with perfect texture through each grain. Not soft-mushy, not hard with too much bite, but firm and still fluffy. Umami is hard to describe, but it brought out a certain flavor to the rice that you can taste. If you buy good quality rice, this is the way to cook it!

I’m assuming the extra time on this setting is to allow the raw grain to soak up the water longer, and after it’s done, to allow for extra steaming. The other thing I tried was to cook a larger amount of rice (5 cups) to make sure the results were the same. Again, it cooked consistently all the way to the bottom of the cooking pan. If you’re one of those people who believe rice is tasteless and has to be drizzled with soy sauce, try making a tasty entree and eat it with good, plain white rice. Give your taste buds some credit, man.

Another unique feature of this rice cooker is the steam setting and the steaming basket that comes with it. My larger 10-cup was ideal for this because the basket is large enough for almost any meal. It can be used as a “set it and forget it” stand alone steamer, but lazy me—I thought, what’s the point unless I can make rice at the same time? So my genius move was to cook fish using foil, which takes longer and can be steamed on the same timeline as a pot of rice.

My black cod (a meatier thicker fish is better; at least an inch thick) goes into the foil, elevated off the bottom with scallions.

Here’s proof I did both at the same time. I made 2 cups of rice on the “Quick” setting, which took about 30 minutes. The fish in a foil packet takes longer than when it’s open-faced, so I’m calculating that the 30 minutes is about right to cook both without over-steaming the fish.

Whoa! Better than I thought! The fish looked tender.

Since this is Chinese style, I made the sauce with soy sauce, sugar, oil, ginger and green onions. I heated it on the stove until boiling and poured it on my fish like a chef. Ha!

(I think it was supposed to sizzle, but mine was a little lame.)

But it still came out pretty tasty and it was so dang easy! Plus I had the rice already cooked to eat it with—that’s an A+ way to use this rice cooker in my mind.

My last test was the Sweet/Sushi rice setting that I thought sounded interesting. I made a traditional Japanese dessert called ohagi, also known as botamochi depending on the season. If you live near an Asian market, you might be able to find sweet rice (mochigome) and canned adzuki bean paste (or you can make it from scratch if you want). Wash the rice good and fill the water to the “Sweet” line on the cooking pan; choose the Sweet/Sushi menu and let the rice cooker do the rest.

Once the mochi rice is cooked, you need to mash it up just enough to still see shapes of the rice grains. I used the bottom of a mug as a masher and it worked fine.

See? Looks like mochi, right?

You can make 2 kinds of ohagi easily. Prepare some adzuki bean paste balls using a cookie dropper and get your kinako ready. Kinako is finely powdered soy bean flour that you mix with sugar to create Japanese style desserts.

Now all you’re doing is molding them into balls with the adzuki. If you use plastic wrap it isn’t that hard. For the ones coated with adzuki on the outside, just get a bit of rice and drop it into the middle and form into balls. The plastic wrap will keep your hands from getting sticky. For the kinako kind, you just do the opposite, then roll the rice ball on a bed of kinako powder.

Boom! You’re done. Mine aren’t very cute—I’m sure you can do better. But if you love mochi, this goes great with green tea!


There are a lot more menu settings on this rice cooker that I didn’t try, so maybe someone else can try those. Good luck if you do!

Products used in this post: Umami® Micom Rice Cooker & Warmer NL-GAC10/18

Please note that these recipes were not tested by Zojirushi America.

All images by Bert Tanimoto ©2021

One day I decided to see what I could make in my toaster oven, from breakfast to dinner. Since I don’t cook, they all had to be easy to make—I found out that baking is a pretty easy way to cook. And toaster ovens don’t get as hot as a regular oven, they’re right on the counter, and they’re big enough for mostly anything (mine is anyway).

First up was my breakfast. Egg toast with cheese. Have you ever tried this? Just put a dent in the middle of a piece of bread and drop an egg in it. Spread some cheese around the top and leave the egg exposed. Then you just pop it in the oven for like 12 to 15 minutes at around 375°F until you see the cheese turn brown.

I used the bottom of a glass to make the cavity, which was easy because you notice I used very thick bread! This is the Japanese shoku pan style bread that you can find at most Asian supermarkets. These slices came from a 340 gram (3/4 lb.) loaf that had 6 slices. You can find varying thicknesses too, sometimes the really thick ones have only 4 slices! If you’ve never tried this kind of bread I would recommend doing so immediately—it’s got a texture that is unbelievably soft (but not squishy), a crust that isn’t hard at all, and a satisfying milky taste. Even with the thinner slices, shoku pan toasts beautifully on the surface while still staying fluffy on the inside.

Aaand…breakfast!

Gotta say I went a little long with the baking on this one. I prefer my yolks runny. Oh well, next time… One great way to eat it though, is to add some Japanese mayo as a topping. The tang of the mayo really compliments the cheese and egg combination nicely.

Kale Chips

Since when did people start eating kale and making it a thing anyway? Didn’t we just ignore it when restaurants used to use it as a decoration on your plate, eventually destined for the busboy to clear off after you were done with the real food? Nobody actually ate it because it tasted horrible! Well, I got news for you, to some of us it still tastes horrible, ha-ha! But somehow they found out it was good for you and kale became the darling of salads. My wife loves kale—I do not. But Kale Chips? OK, I gotta admit they’re pretty good! This is easy—just coat with olive oil (not too much), salt and pepper, and bake it for 10 or 15 minutes at 350°F. Try to brown but not burn it.

One thing; make sure you cut the kale into large enough pieces. It shrinks considerably. Otherwise, it makes a good snack. believe it or not.

My own version of a snack. Mix it with popcorn. Doesn’t this look more like I’m justifying eating this stuff?

Foil Packet Chicken

Sorry, I can’t take the credit for this one—my wife helped me out because she didn’t want me to ruin dinner! But this was easy too. The sauce is made from olive oil, Dijon mustard, herbs you would have around the house and lemons. There are a bunch of similar recipes you can look up online, but the real benefit of cooking with foil is that everything steams inside at the same time, even the potatoes. Took about 30 minutes at 375°F. One thing we forgot was to slice the potatoes in half, which would have helped bake them faster—I would recommend not skipping this step. Otherwise, you get half-baked potatoes.

Dinner is served! No pan to clean—just toss the foil after cooking, or serve it like that and pretend you’re outdoors camping. There’s a whole library of foil cooking recipes out there; just remember it’s not just for camping. It’s great for oven baking too.

My dirty little secret: our regular oven doesn’t work really well, which is the real reason we’ve been using a toaster oven ever since it went on the blink. But you know what—we don’t really miss it. As long as you don’t need to bake for a crowd or have multiple baking pans or cookie sheets you have to do at the same time, you don’t really need a big oven. As long as your toaster oven is a high quality larger capacity one, you’ll find it’s well worth the counter space!

Just For Fun

This guy actually broke into our house by chewing the screen!

The same one on a raid. He came repeatedly for weeks and weeks. We tried hot pepper on the screen, taping it shut, etc.

Finally had to call an exterminator. Sorry guys, squirrels are cute but not when they start invading. He even brought a buddy one day. That was the last straw for me!

Products used in this post: Micom Toaster Oven ET-ZLC30

Please note that these recipes were not tested by Zojirushi America.

All images by Bert Tanimoto ©2021