Bear in mind the umami<\/em> setting takes over an hour to cook rice, so time your dinner accordingly. Believe me, it\u2019ll 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. I\u2019m assuming the extra time on this setting is to allow the raw grain to soak up the water longer, and after it\u2019s 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\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n 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 \u201cset it and forget it\u201d stand alone steamer, but lazy me\u2014I thought, what\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s proof I did both at the same time. I made 2 cups of rice on the \u201cQuick\u201d setting, which took about 30 minutes. The fish in a foil packet takes longer than when it\u2019s open-faced, so I\u2019m 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!![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.zojirushi.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/fish-plated-main.jpg\")
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\nAren\u2019t you curious? Can a rice cooker bring out umami<\/em> in rice? I wanted to know more, yes I did, so I took the Zojirushi NL-GAC10\/18<\/strong><\/span><\/a> 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\u2019s in a higher price range, but I was surprised to see how well this cooker did, especially with that umami<\/em> setting.<\/p>\n
\n<\/a>The rice really was \u201csweeter\u201d 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!
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