I Carried My Rice Cooker Across The Country

Last week, Food Editor Ruby Baek wrote about her love for the cast-iron pot, which prompted this week’s article — my undying love for my rice cooker.

Rice cookers are pretty much essential in every East Asian home — and honestly, I don’t know many East Asians who can even cook rice without one (so props to Indian and Persian cooks). Growing up in a Taiwanese household, my first memory of a rice cooker was the vintage green Tatung Rice Cooker — the one my parents brought from Taiwan to West Virginia in the 1980s. Thanks to Yunhai, you can now buy that exact model in the U.S. It’s still going strong today.

I have so many fond memories tied to that rice cooker: watching my mom steam fish for family meals, or using it to make mochi for school projects. It would always rattle furiously — in a way that was frankly concerning — while a steady billow of steam filled our cold San Francisco kitchen. Sometime in middle school, my parents upgraded to a Zojirushi — and after that, there was really no turning back. I still have a lot of love for the Tatung; it’s versatile, durable, and quintessentially Taiwanese. But when it comes to making rice, my Zojirushi is unbeatable.

The first model we owned (and the one I’m most nostalgic about) is the Zojirushi NS-ZCC10. My parents now have a total of six rice cookers at home, so when I visited this November, I decided to bring the NS-ZCC10 back with me to New York. It made it safely through SFO’s TSA checkpoint, with a few strangers getting a good laugh out of seeing a rice cooker as a carry-on. After a red-eye and 2,586.1 miles of travel across the country, making a fresh pot of rice was the very first thing I did when I got home — and I loved it.

Bear with me for a moment as I rant about why I adore this machine. This made-in-Japan model comes in two sizes (5.5-cup and 10-cup), and the top-tier Japanese craftsmanship delivers perfect rice every single time. The rounded bottom lets you scoop effortlessly, using the curvature of the nonstick bowl to help you get every last grain.

This is a big upgrade from rice cookers with flat bottoms, where you’re forced to scrape off that layer of hardened, coagulated rice. It’s the attention to detail that makes the Zojirushi truly shine. The retractable power cord lets you adjust the exact length you need, reducing kitchen clutter. You can also fine-tune the texture of your rice with settings like “regular/sushi,” “softer,” and “harder.” Additional modes include porridge, sweet rice, semi-brown rice, rinse-free rice (still not sure about that one), and quick cooking.

And then there’s the music. The Zojirushi “sings” every time you start or finish a cycle. It plays “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” when it begins, and “Amaryllis” when it’s done. It’s iconic. It’s cute. And whoever came up with it deserves all the gold stars. It’s such a small thing, but hearing that little melody throughout the day genuinely makes my apartment feel more like home.