Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I've owned several high-tech rice cookers, but this one is my first pressure type cooker, and it uses induction heating. My last rice cooker was the Zojirushi NS-ZCC10 Neuro Fuzzy 6-cup model, which served me well for many years.
The Cuckoo HF0610F is a fairly big and heavy for a 6-cup rice cooker, bigger than my old Zojirushi. It's very solid feeling; the lever on the top is for sealing the pressure mechanism. The feature layout of the Cuckoo is not very intuitive and the english instructions are badly translated, making the unit a bit confusing to operate. For example, the difference between "Glutinous" and "Sushi" settings; from the manual:
"Glutinous : When you want to have sticky and nutritive white rice.
Sushi: When you want to have a little more sticky and nutritive
white rice than Glutinous rice."
What does this mean? I'm not sure!
There seem to be too many features and settings to deal with, none of which are explained very well in the manual (eg soak time, heat time). It's also fairly loud, compared to the non pressure cookers I've used before. The cooker makes a loud hissing noise when releasing steam; this happens for about 5 minutes during mid-cook cycle, and once at the end when the rice is almost ready. Also, there is no porridge (congee) setting, which I miss.
If you can look past the shortcomings, the unit makes great rice, and pretty fast. Brown rice comes out much better than it did with my Zojirushi. Brown rice can be cooked in one of two ways: GABA, or Brown/mixed. As far as I can tell, GABA rice is sprouted brown rice, basically. The setting allows you to have the rice soak for a set amount of time (4-16 hours) before cooking, so that it germinates, making a more nutritious rice (?). Otherwise I'm not sure how the GABA preset does anything differently than the mixed/brown setting. One thing you'll notice is that the amount of water specified is pretty much the same for whatever kind of rice or grain you're cooking. My old Zojirushi had different lines on the pot for different kinds of rice, to specify more water for brown rice for example. So, when it comes to adding more or less water, you're on your own. I think the pressure functionality of the cooker might take care of this though, because I never had a problem as long as I filled up the pot to the specified line regardless of white or brown rice. Possibly with pressure cooking, more of the water gets into the rice rather than escaping as steam during the longer cooking time for brown rice. My Zojirushi on brown rice setting usually produced slightly mushy rice. This unit does not. The brown rice comes out having quite discernible individual grains, but still tender and soft to eat.
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Cuckoo Rice Cooker | CRP-HF0610F (Ivory/Red)
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