Many of us like to have the most featured packed, highest quality appliances in our kitchen. Unfortunately we need to balance our desire for high end kitchen gadgets with the need to not engage in too much spending. One example of this is in the purchase of a rice cooker. There are many fancy Japanese cookers available on the market, but unless you have very advanced needs a cheap Aroma rice cooker is really just as good.
When you buy rice cooker from aromas line up you get a basic, no frills ability to cook basic, no frills white rice. For most people, who don't live on rice on a daily basis, this is really all you need.
With one of the fancy Japanese rice cookers you get more functionality – such as the ability to easily cook sushi rice, brown rice and sticky rice. Sure, these features are handy to have. But if you are not going to use them that often, how much are they really worth to you?
Aroma rice cookers – such as the large capacity ARC838TC – can easily be found for less than forty bucks. It can cook a whole lot of rice, more than most families could eat in a few days.
The high end Japanese rice cookers? Yes they have the extra features, but instead of paying 30 or 40 dollars, the price tag can be in the hundreds. This price differential is significant, and is enough to buy you several large sacks of rice!
Note also that you do need a fancy rice cooker to cook fancy rice such as Sushi rice. If you want to make a treat of one of the more advanced rice recipes occasionally you can easily cook then in an old fashioned pot – there are always alternatives!
While the Japanese rice cookers are great to have, an Aroma rice cooker is a fine frugal alternative.