Idle Time

I originally wrote this review on the product listing on Target’s website, but unfortunately Target’s website isn’t really designed for reviews longer than a paragraph. So here’s the Director’s Cut.

Ratings

• Overall: 3 out of 5
• Design: 3 out of 5
• Quality: 4 out of 5
• Ease of use: 2 out of 5
• Easy to clean: 5 out of 5
• Value: 4 out of 5

Pros:

• Yup, it’s smol.
• The lid and pot are dishwasher safe.
• The pot is non-stick and indeed the rice did not stick.
• Comes with a rice-measuring cup (160 ml) and rice paddle.

And it does make pretty good rice, assuming you get the ratio correct. If you like yours a little crispy on the bottom, this’ll do you well. If not… well, me either, but we’ll live.

Cons:

• First thing out of the box, I had to repair the lid, which was assembled incorrectly. (The lid screw was drilled into the knob off-center. I unscrewed it and screwed it into the hole it was supposed to be in.)
• The rice-making instructions are almost useless. Like most rice cookers, they tell you to measure the rice using the provided 160-ml cup. But then they give you the rice:water ratios in terms of US 240-ml cups! Treat them as ratios; for white rice, 160 ml of dry rice needs 200 ml of water. (You could use a regular measuring cup, or use the rice cup to measure 160 ml of water and then 40 more.)
• The marks on the inside of the bowl are completely useless. They’re labeled as “0.5 cup” and “1 cup”. They’re actually 1.5 and 2 US cups! Pour in water up those lines and then pour it out into a 2-cup measuring cup and you’ll see. The “1 cup” line marks how much rice you’ll get from 1 rice-cup of dry rice—which is exactly no help when trying to measure the rice or the water in the first place. If you dump in water up to that line, it’ll be way too much. (Remember, the right amount of water for that much white rice is 200 ml. 2 US cups is 480 ml!) I knocked a star off of “Ease of use” for this.
• The LEDs are surprisingly dim. In a bright kitchen, it’s hard to tell whether it’s on Cook or Warm.
• There’s no on/off switch, so plugging it in immediately turns on Warm mode. Fairly typical of low-end rice cookers like this one. You may want to get a switch tap if you’d like to leave it plugged in.

Conclusion

Soooo there’s a bit of homework. But once that’s all sorted, it works fine. Made decent rice.

Bonus tip that I didn’t mention in the Target review: Add one-quarter teaspoon of garlic salt to the rice+water for tasty garlic rice.

Categories: Reviews. | Comments: 0 (feed).