You can or any source of heat, including a fire. I do it all the time. But an electric rice cooker useful to have and convenient and I use mine all the time. You can turn it on and do other things while it makes rice for you, which is helpful when you’re busy.
If you go shopping for a rice cooker you’ll find American-made rice cookers, Japanese-made, Chinese-made, and Korean-made. The prices can range from $12 to $600 and it can be hard to figure out which to buy.
In Korea everyone used to swear by but these days the most popular brand is which is what I use. Mine is also a pressure cooker, so I can use it to make multigrain rice without having to soak any grains, and I can even use it to make . It was expensive but rice is my favorite thing to eat, and I eat it every day, so it was totally worth it: my rice cooker makes delicious rice and delicious soup.
If you go shopping for Cuckoo rice cookers keep in mind that the instructions, buttons, and functions can be written in Korean and the English is not always great. Take a good look at it, and look at the buttons, make sure you can understand how to use it. Mine even speaks to me in Korean! It’s always telling me the progress of the rice cooking lol.
If you don’t make a lot of rice, I would suggest you just make it in a pot, or buy the cheapest rice cooker for now. Rice cookers are becoming more and more popular in the West these days. They can be found in some department stores and almost alwaysin Korean, Chinese, or Japanese grocery stores, and online as well.
