100v not compatible in the US
I have clay pots, and it is fun to use them. I was asking what advantage(s) you are trying to replicate. I am not sure what you want to say by posting the clay pot photo. I never said people donāt use clay pots. For the Chinese sand-clay pots: First, they are very inexpensive. Second, they create hotspots therefore easily create burned rice (because clay is a poor heat conductor). Third, they create a sense of nostalgia. Many restaurants would actually cook their rice in typical rice cookers and transfer back to clay pots ā e.g. they donāt start cooking in the clay pots.
If an expensive robot is used to replicate this task, then this would definitely remove advantage #1 and #3. Feature 2 can be done with other material and certainly not the same reason as the Japanese Jiro reference you have used. In sushi, it is not a goal to create burned rice. This is why Jiro actually use aluminum pots, not clay pots ā see the slightly dull, but still shiny silver pots.
I am not sure what I said is contradicting.
Can you share your thought as to what features you are trying to get from the Japanese clay pot into a modern rice cooker? If it is cheap price and nostalgia, then a high tech >$1000 machine will work against those features. If it is about the high pressure rice cooking, there are many high pressure (metal based) rice cookers. If it is about burned rice, then it is a very niche feature and one can simply go back to the early electric rice cooker models when rice were routinely burned. To build a very expensive and technological cookware to only intentional to create hotpots and poor heat conductionā¦ is something not clear to me right away, but maybe there is a feature I am overlooking here which you can share.
So what feature are you thinking to marry between the old and new? There got to be something you can share?
This type of cheap clay pot rice is good because with the charcoal fire used, the smoke diffuse by the heat of charcoal infused in the rice, and more with pores of the claypot. The control of heat is the most essential aspect for the āburnt riceā at the bottom of these clay pot.
From the article:
The technique of charcoal cooking
And persevere he has, even in the face of changing times and the pressure to modernize his way of cooking. While most hawkers have moved on to using gas which is faster and more convenient, Choong still insists on cooking his rice over charcoal fire because he says that it imparts a smoky flavour that cooking over gas just cannot replicate.
According to Choong, the hardest part of charcoal cooking is heat control. He has to control the temperature of the fire by manually adding or moving the charcoal pieces around. There is also a fan by the stoves to circulate oxygen and maintain the live embers. āCharcoal is a living sort of fire that changes when you add or take away a single piece coal. Even the type of charcoal used changes the taste of the rice. The ones we use are considerably more expensive.ā
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I did get some burnt rice with fat added to a normal rice cooker. I havenāt try to cook a recipe of a pot rice in a rice cooker yet. But I did succeed in getting burnt rice with a clay pot recipe with a cast iron pot on induction.
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I see. It actually makes sense that you can induce (encourage) some rice burning. I have maybe done it once or twice with an electric rice cookers, but most of the time I just use a clay pot to do clay pot cooking. I prefer a more subtle rice burn. Like a light brown, not a dark brown. Today, I just came back from a Korean restaurant where their stone pot creating much darker burns. By the way, any material can burnā¦just turn up the heatā¦even an aluminum or copper cookware can burn. It is that when you donāt want burn, then the aluminum and copper give you the control.
To be honest, I have mixed feeling with claypots, they need to be immersed in water before cooking to avoid cracks. Quality glazed claypot is more a steamer and not the same as the sand claypot. I will buy some of those cheap pots shown on Sgeeās photos for my summer barbecue grill.
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Unrelatedā¦ but I just want to share. No, he is not related to me. Just a random kid.
I thought the water soaking procedure is just once. I have only done it once or twice when the pots were brand new or they have not been used for a long time.
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If you use it everyday, the humidity will remain in the pores with the washing of the pot. I think. I have a kind of tajine in unglazed clay, they told me to immense every time in water before use.
Just one last point before you buy the pots. There are fully glazed, partial glazed and fully unglazed clay pots. Best wish. They are very cheap. As long as you have space, you should get one.
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Have not posted lately
Busy pulling weeds and reseeding, some of my posting were returned? reason?
CUTE! My electric rice cooker looks the same
As for the pots, the filipinos cook their rice using claypots, they line it with banana leaves which gives it a very nice flavor.
The Iranians also like their rice slightly burnt, just light brown, and one friend of mine even add a small amount of oil and saffron to h er dish.
The slightly burnt crunchy caramelized rice on the bottom of the paella called socarrat is the best part. When one can achieve that, paella is the best. Too bad, most paella pans are not clay ( or they will break)
I had an Italian glazed clay pot for cooking onion. The instruction is to soak it in water a few minutes before being used each time. Unfortunately, the top broke ini transit, so, I have just been using my black columbian la chamba pots. I love them!
I went crazy collecting hand made tin lined copper cataplana from portugal. They are the prototype for our pressure cooker. I fell in love with copper, stating collecting them a few years agoā¦ However, I hate to use them bec I worry about messing them up. The ones I use the most are the cataplanas as I have a smaller one for 2 people, a bigger one for a lot of guest, and one in between for my sonās outings in the boat when he sleeps overnight. It is very fast cooking, I usually do a a countdown from 15 minutes with the ones for 2, and in about 10 minutes, the food is cooked. Beware because most cataplanas from portugal or sold in the US are mass produced, the copper is thin. I learned my lesson, bought and sold . It has to be hand made. That is very thick copper which ensures fast flavorful cooking!
too expensive!
How you keep contradicting yourself:
Point 1: You think itās silly to romanticize the old materials
Point 2: Cooking with clayware is pointless
I did not at any point make any assertIons that my ultimate goal was to specifically purchase a clay rice cooker. Although both Korean and Japanese manufacture them so there must be some benefit I am not aware of. Apparently you arenāt either - I however have elected not to disparage this technique. Hopefully some Korean or Japanese posters will chime in and educate us.
One of things that struck me in Japan is how consistently fluffy and al dente cooked rice is, from 7-Eleven to the 3* sushi bars (with a tendency of increasing perfection at higher price points). Thatās what Iām seeking to achieve specifically as it relates to preparing fluffy white unburnt rice (shortgrain, long grain and sweet rice varieties). I currently own a $200 Zojirushi cooker which 15yrs ago was the highest end model available here in the U.S. However I have not been able to replicate my experiences in Japan even when using $30/lb Japanese rice I schlepped from Japan. Perhaps Iām using an incorrect technique. My fascination with $1+k rice cookers honestly is very shallow - cool new gear and throwing $$$ to solve a problem.
My interest in old school ānostalgicā techniques and cookware to prepare rice in its many forms and origins lies in what I have experienced and observed to produce the ultimate outcomes. Examples:
- Jiroās claim that the high pressure iron kamado cooking is the only method to achieve the desired outcome for the rice he sources.
- Chinese claypot rice as discussed above by @naf. I have never achieved this in an electic rice cooker - desired degree of burnt rice and you need an open fire to infuse smoke
- Paella - same as #2
- Fluffy Indian and Persian rice (& burnt)
- Burnt Korean rice
- Bamboo basket steamed sticky rice in Indochina region
- Sticky rice cooked in bamboo
- Risotto - time consuming
- Super smooth HK style congee
Each of them requires me to tend to the stove or fire and as much as I enjoy cooking; more often than not time is a premium and I would love the convenience of a one touch contraption. I am not aware of any electric rice cooker that can achieve perfection for the items listed above. Perhaps the $1k cooker to achieve #1 or come very close. The genesis of the electric rice cooker after all was for the one touch convenience to prepare a staple starch consumed daily by a very large population of the world.
Your electric cooker looks the same? So does it come with a cute baby too? 
Actually, you and I may have very similar rice cookers. Mine is a 10-year old fuzzy logic rice cooker from Zojirushi.
All civilizations at one point or another were using clayware because human understand clay much earlier than metal ā which is also why several religions have gods created human from mud and clay.
Even after our ancestors mastered metalsmith, metal was still very expensive. Most people cannot afford a lot of metal. Metal cookware were shared by communities and later metal cookware were passed down from one generation to another. The idea that you can register a new set of cookware at Bed Bath and Beyond for your wedding is relatively new.
In term of the slightly burned/scorched rice, early rice cookers routinely produced this. If a person has never seen this, he/she can ask their parents and grandparents. This is actually something people tried to avoid for a long time. After the rice cooker technology has much improved, and also the introduction of Teflon to rice cookware (not many know this), that is when burned rice really started to disappear.
https://hk.news.appledaily.com/local/daily/article/20030506/3274355
I still think it is counterproductive to romanticize something without understanding. I donāt see anything I wrote which is particularly contradicting. I have several clay cookware which is why I know it has shortcomings. As for the statement I wrote about āthe benefits of old fashion clay/mud cooking and nonsenseā¦ā There is nothing contradicting about it. I have copied an image specifically there. That feature is undesirable to try to reproduce. So maybe you took my statement out of context and misrepresenting my stance?
In case it is unclear, this picture is suggesting that the poor conductivity is a good thing.
I donāt believe it, which is why I said it is nonsense to try to replicate poor conductivity into an electric cooker. Tell me I am wrong. Tell me that you believe a poor conductive material is better for making rice. I am willing to listen.
I have said that I recognized that the existence of pressurized electric rice cookers. Most Japanese sushi chefs use electric rice cookers. Jiro is one of the few who still uses a relatively older setup, but he doesnāt use a clay pot. Jiro believes in high pressure. He does not believe in poor conductivity. In fact, that is the one specific feature he took out. He kept the kamado setup, and he kept the wood cover, but he uses highly thermal conductive aluminum pots. You have used Jiro a few times to support your idea, but you do understand there is a good possibility that Jiro actually will agree with me that aluminum is the way to go, and not clay.
Well, that is certain weird, if not contradicting. Let me clear something here. Anyone is free to buy what they want. What I was criticizing is the marketing concept for building a very technical machine with a clay insert (poor thermal conductivity) and actually put this in the promotion picture. In short, I am saying that I donāt believe in this approach.
It is my understand that you have been criticizing my stance for more than a few posts. Now, you are telling me that you may not believe in the clay part afterall, but rather you simply want the awesome final rice product. So what makes you think I am against good rice product?
wish there is an attached baby
My poms would go wild with happiness.
I actually got my first rice cooker, a panasonic in 1968, when my mentor returned to Japan for vacation. He giftedme my first rice cooker which lasted me me thru 2003 when I had a Chinese carpenter who came and lived with me for 3 years remodeling my house. I do not know what he did but he never wiped the bottom of the inner pot dry, so it shorted out within a few months. I bought another panasonic, and within a year, same thing happened. This latest one was purchased before he left in 2006, it is a large aroma, with all kinds of buttons. It is a large one as the carpenter eats a lot of rice. Since 2012, I have stored it in the closet, just bring it out to make 5-6 cups of rice, then refrigerate the let overs with stretch tite. I use Kokuho red for cooking my everyday rice
Oh yeah, that was relatively important back then. A little bit of moisture is fine, but a lot of water droplets can kill the rice cookers. About refrigerating rice, I noticed that some rice refrigerate well, and some donāt. Some keep their texture, while others just go bad (not toxic or anything, but the texture would get pretty bad). Kokuho type of rice does well. Thai Jasmine rice does well also.
Your entire argument and rabid disdain for clay as a cooking vessel for rice appears predicated on the conjecture that boiling is the sole and only āacceptableā method for preparing rice. Hence your obsession with vessels made of materials with high conductivity.
From what I have been able to gather from the google translation of the website, the $1k Tiger cooks rice by steaming. The earthenware vesselās poor conductivity helps retain heat and in the process maintain a consistent temperature to cook rice in addition to the primary heat source emanating from the steam. I have no clue if this holds any water but it seems to have some merit worth exploring.
Let me be very EXPLICIT - I am not a scientist/physicist/metallurgist heck for that matter I am not even a good home cook. I do not profess to have any expertise cooking rice in any form or vessel. I am NOT advocating clay or any other earthenware material for cooking rice. I am however open to ANY cooking methodology/equipment/material from any culture no matter how ancient or modern to achieve what I perceive as warm fluffy unburnt white rice nirvana. The more convenient the better.
You believe the marketing of cooking rice in clay is hyperbole but yet you will consider clay ware to cook other ingredients Have you prepared rice by steaming? Have you cooked rice in clay vessel on a regular basis? Have you researched and tested various rice cooking methodologies? Have you tested the Tiger $1k rice cooker or any of the new Japanese rice cookers with an earthenware pot?
Your condescending tone implies you are an authority in this field. I am inclined to postulate you are not and prefer to place my bet on the likes of Tiger/Zojirushi/Toshiba etc. The Japanese have this annoying habit of obsessing over the smallest details in the goal of perfection. Additionally, the audacity of a well established company introducing rice cookers w earthenware pots at a stratospheric $1+k price tag has me intrigued enough to check it out. I am also intrigued with another trend of using a heavy cast iron pot which appears to more closely mirror Jiroās kamado cooking method. Jury is still out for me on which is a superior technology in rice cooker advancements - doesnāt help that all the marketing is in Japanese and none of these cookers come in a voltage compatible with US electrical outlets.
I am still puzzled why you keep raising the point of me romanticizing clay??? My two posts prior to your assertion consist of #RiceCookerGoals, a link to a $1k rice cooker and a picture of a metal kamado potā¦ hardly romantic ā¦
On the other hand I can wax poetically about a delicious serving of HK styled claypot rice/ālap mei fanā cooked over charcoal
You know. Obviously, you are making this much more personal than it should. My post was originally about the general population. You should discuss the merit of the cookware and the design. Talk about science and engineering and facts in general, and less about me. If you think what I said about the electric clay rice cooker is factual wrong, then point them out: why a poor thermal conductive clay is the way to go. It may be true. Keep it about the cookware, and not about me.
The clay being a poor thermal conductor and therefore a good heat retainer is a poor argument in this case. If it is a stovetop cookwareā¦ then maybe there is a small argument for that because the cookware is exposed to an open environment.
However, this is an insulated electric rice cooker. The insulation is already on the outside, so why build another one inside? An electric rice cooker is build to control temperature. It can control the heating of a thermal conductive insert better than a poor thermal conductive insert. You can always drive a fast car slow, but you cannot drive a slow car fast. An electric rice cooker heater can control the aluminum insert better than the clay insert. Like I said, Jiro and others have made the decision to not use clay. You donāt think he knows what he was doing?
Let me focus on to the basics. I have said that the design of making an electric clay rice cooker is poor, and I have given plenty scientific and engineering arguments. I have asked you about what particular feature you like from a potential clay insert rice cooker, but I havenāt heard any. Your specific stance has been evasive. Once awhile, you will half heartedly point to one thing, but then back off right away ā like this insulation argument here. You make a claim and then suddenly says you not sure if this holds water. You also earlier said you are not personally invested the idea of clay rice cooker and that is not your ultimate goal. If you are not sure about something, can you have a leg against the opposite view? I donāt see how you can tell the the other person that his viewpoint is incorrect if you donāt have even know what is right. Let me use an example. If I said I think the Earth is round and I have provided evidence, then you should also provide the counter-evidence that the Earth is flat, showing me that I am wrong. I am cool with that. However, you cannot say āI donāt know if the Earth is round or flat, I actually donāt know, but you are not allowed to say the Earth is roundā This is what is happening right now. You have said more than a few times that you are not sure, and at the same time that I am not to discredit the electric clay insert rice cooker.
As for your question about how I can against an electrical version of clay rice cooker, but not a regular cheap clay pot. I have clearly explained that numerous times, and am not repeating again. You can like and buy what you want. I can also make my points and explanations here.
Noā¦ this picture you have postedā¦ I donāt think it is an iron pot. It is shiny and silver. Most likely aluminum, and certainly not clay. Even if it is iron (unlikely), iron is vastly closer to aluminum than to clay. For one, cast iron and aluminum are both metals. You have repeatedly point to something you consider to be evidence to only actually supporting my statement, like the Jiro argument earlier and this aluminum insert photo here. This is very confusing, and contradicting.
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