Kenwood RC305 > Reviews > From an eastern perspective

Author's product rating:   

Performance	Excellent
Ease of use	Very easy
Durability	Long
User's Manual	Good
Value for money	Good

Advantages:	cooks rice perfectly
Disadvantages:	not multi functional

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Before talking about this Kenwood rice cooker, I would like to talk about cooking rice from an eastern perspective.

Growing up in the Far East, it is hard for me to imagine why a lot of western people boil rice in large quantity of water and throw the water away (I know rice is cooked differently in places like Italy or Spain but I'm not going into that). Our mothers always told us that by doing the above, all the flavour and nutrients are gone with the water AND it is more likely to have rice porridge than proper rice. After living in England for many years, I realised that this may be because people here prefer long grain rice, which does not have as much starch coming out during boiling. So, what do people do in the East then? First, we like rice a bit more sticky. In fact, when you go to Chinese, Japanese, Korean or Thai restaurant, the rice they have there are more sticky than the most popular long grain rice we find in supermarkets. The most sticky I think is the Japanese and the Korean. According to Delia Smith, this is because Eastern people eat out of a bowl with chopsticks. It is much easier to 'manoeuvre' if rice can stick together between chopsticks. To be honest, I did not hear of this theory until I saw Delia's programme, as people do not usually realise why they do what they do until someone points it out! But I believe it may have been only one of the reasons because Koreans eat with chopsticks and spoons. When they eat, they put rice in the spoon and eat the rice off the spoon. This way, it does not matter whether the rice is sticky or not. Other reasons could be the climate and soil in the East is just good for the more sticky rice or the fact that the stickier the rice is, the more filling - good for people who has to work on land all day in a massive agricultural society.

Anyway, because of our love for the more sticky type of rice and the real flavour that comes with the plain rice (Eastern people do not eat fried or flavoured rice very often), we like to put the exact amount of water that the rice can absorb while cooking it. Before the invention of rice cooker, grandmothers used to measure with their hands/fingers. They cook it on stove until it boils and then turn the heat down to medium until the rice is cooked and at the same time all the water is absorbed. As you can imagine, this method of measuring water is not most reliable, as it depends on the size of the saucepan (no good if one can't fit their hand in in the first place) and the amount of rice (the smaller the amount of rice, the less reliable it is).

After we have rice cookers, things are much easier.

I bought a little rice cooker before - maximum capacity is 6 portions of rice. After a while, I realised that it was not enough when I invited more than six people over. So I looked around and bought this Kenwood rice cooker. This can cook up to 6 cups of rice, which means 12 portions.

The rice cooker comes in 3 parts. Outside is a white ceramic type of pot with a round metal right in the centre at the bottom, which is the heating devise. Inside is a non-stick bowl where you put the rice in. Finally, it's the glass lid which you can see through. The cord is not detachable.

To cook rice, you first use the cup to measure rice and put it into the bowl and then pour cold water into the bowl to the level required. There are marks inside the bowl which indicates how much water is needed according to the numbers of cups of rice in the bowl. Finally, you put the lid on, switch it on (indicator light becomes red) and all you have to is to wait until the switch is clicked back up to keep-warm mode (yellow light). To get the best result, I usually leave it for about another 10 minutes to get rid of the extra moist. The rice doesn't under- or overcook and stays warm as long as you keep it plugged in. However, the longer you keep it on, the less moist the rice is going to be. It works well with all kinds of rice (long grain or Eastern types).

The down side of this rice cooker is that you cannot re-heat rice with it like some other types of rice cookers that could be found in eastern countries. Another limitation is that it can only be used to cook plain rice whereas a lot of rice cookers from the Far East gives you more options than plain rice such as rice porridge or even stew.

This rice cooker is very easy to clean. Just wash the inner bowl with warm soapy water and wipe the outer devise with damp cloth.

Thanks for reading.