Panasonic makes a smarter rice cooker

Need cooked rice without thinking? A dedicated rice cooker will do the job, and a new play on the tech could even make the rice taste better overall.

This week, Panasonic is taking a break from telling us about new cameras and is instead pointing our collective noses and mouths to a small white box which it says can affect rice as it cooks it, using a coating inside the pan to distribute heat evenly as the water inside boils with the rice.

This coating is diamond coating, which Panasonic says takes longer to wear in and conducts heat very quickly, with this working in conjunction with a dimpled pan design to maximise heat efficiency.

Working alongside this is fuzzy logic, which changes the temperature of the water based on the available amount of rice and water inside, with support for different types of rice, all of this information coming together to make rice slowly and quickly depending on what is needed.

In fact, you’ll find support in this model for white, brown, jasmine, sticky, multi-grain, and clay-pot, with even a bit of porridge able to be made here.

About the only thing missing from the equation is risotto, with no support for arborio rice.

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Well that’s not entirely true, but to do it, you have to read the instructions, with Panasonic chiming in saying this works under slow cook, with no dedicated mode for it. If you want that right now, you’ll want to look at another gadget from either Breville or DeLonghi if easy risotto is a must have on your list.

In either case, you’ll find these Panasonic rice cookers in stores shortly for either $149 for a 1L model (SR-ZE105WST) or $169 for a bigger 1.8L model (SR-ZE185WST).