Features and specifications

For the modern home rice cookers, the smallest single-person model cooks 1 rice cup (180 ml) whereas the largest cooks 10 rice cups (1.8 liter). The prices vary greatly, depending on the capacity, features, materials used, the countries of origin. The typical lower price models use electric heaters to heat the inner cooking bowl controlled by built-in microprocessors, whereas the high-end models feature various ideas of improved and better cooking methods.
These inventions include, e.g. microprocessor-controlled cooking cycles, employing pressure cooking, utilizing induction heating (IH) that can generate heat directly within the inner cooking bowl itself (all the IH type models are microprocessor-controlled), employing varying pressure control mechanism named "dual-pressure" method that creates repeated pressure/release cycles during the cooking, using various materials (e.g. copper, pure carbon, ceramic, diamond powder coating) for the inner cooking bowl because of their higher heat conductivity, utilizing more than one induction heating element, or employing a mechanism to collect and return the boiled over liquid to the inner rice bowl.


The pressure-cooking models can raise the water's boiling point higher, e.g. from 100 °C at 1.0 atm up to about 110 °C at 1.4 atm, and are generally believed[by whom?] to produce a better result. They are also suitable for cooking brown rice, which is richer in dietary fiber, more digestible.[clarification needed] The pressure cooking models can also be used in high altitude areas