Can I use easy cook, quick cook or parboiled rice in your rice cookers?

In one simple word – NO!

Parboiled rice (also called converted rice or easy cook rice) is NOT suitable for use in our fuzzy logic rice cookers.

Our fuzzy logic rice cookers are designed to cook uncooked, raw rice grains from scratch. They use sensors and programmed cooking cycles to monitor the rice and adjust the cooking process according to how the rice responds to heat and water. With parboiled, easy cook or quick cook rice, the grains have already been altered by the pre-cooking process, so the rice cooker cannot accurately determine how much cooking they still require.

Think of it this way...

Using parboiled or quick-cook rice in a rice cooker is a little like:

• Putting partially baked dough into a bread maker and expecting it to follow the normal bread-making cycle.

• Putting already-cooked chips into a chip fryer and expecting them to cook like raw potatoes.

• Trying to cook a food from scratch when part of the cooking process has already been completed.

The rice cooker is following a cooking programme designed for raw rice, but the rice itself has already been partially cooked. The two simply don't work together as intended.

What happens if you use it?

You may find that the rice is undercooked, overcooked, too firm, too soft, sticky or otherwise inconsistent. The problem is that there is no reliable way for the fuzzy logic system to know exactly how much pre-cooking the parboiled rice has already received.

Even if you happen to get an acceptable result, it is unlikely to give you the consistent texture and quality that our rice cookers are designed to produce.

This is not a fault with the rice cooker – it is a compatibility issue with the type of rice being used.

So what rice should I use?

For the best results, use normal uncooked/raw rice that is suitable for the cooking programme you have selected. Our rice cookers can cook a wide variety of raw rice types, including white, brown, sushi and other varieties, depending on the model and available cooking functions.

Parboiled/easy cook/quick cook rice is generally better suited to conventional boiling or microwave preparation, where you can control the cooking time yourself. In our opinion, these rapid cooking methods don't produce the same quality, texture and flavour that you can achieve by properly cooking raw rice in a quality rice cooker.

For a useful overview of the different types of rice available and their characteristics, see our Guide to Rice Grains.