ZojirushiNP-GBC05XT Induction Heating System Rice Cooker and Warmer, 0.54 L, Stainless Dark Brown

This is my first review and I'm writing it in case it helps anyone out there similar to me ... so first a little background: I recently decided to change up my diet - I had been on a mostly wild salmon / some-type-of-vegetable diet. I weight train a bit so I've tried to keep my protein high and carbs low, but I decided to totally shake it up after reading a lot of research on vascular health. Despite my carb / low protein fears, I switched to a more/less vegan diet: grains & legumes for fats/protein + vegetables - zero added fat of any type, zero animal protein including dairy and whey protein powder. Well, some surprising things happened within 1 week: I lost some of my stubborn belly flab! No amount of cardio, diet, lifting has made a budge in that for 10 years, but this mostly carb diet did! Bro-trition did NOT predict that.But there was a problem, and so on with this review: cooking steel cut oats, spelt, barley, brown rice and other grains just for 1 day's meal is a real pain in the butt. Sure you can make extra ahead of time but that's not very tasty re-heated, at least for me. And, yes, you can use a slow cooker for steel-cut oatmeal, but that also has mixed results. I began researching solutions and came across rice cookers ... a dedicated appliance just for rice? really? and, holy crap HOW MUCH? I skipped it and kept on with my pots and pans ... But I couldn't shake the notion that as odd as it sounded, a dedicated appliance might actually make sense, mostly because a few years ago I bought a Zoji hot water thermos Zojirushi America Corporation CV-DCC40XT VE Hybrid Water Boiler and Warmer, 4-Liter, Stainless Dark Brown which also seemed ridiculous but has turned out to be a real luxury ... that's another story.So I did a lot of rice cooker research: Zoji, tiger, cuckoo ... and I researched all of the features: size, fuzzy logic, timers, modes, heat type, pressure, clean up, et al. With all of that I settled on this one because I've had a good Zoji experience, I like the looks the best, and I couldn't find any data showing that other brands with more features were marginally better for my needs. However, I did struggle with which size ... if you buy from other retailers, I found the next size up for $10 more once you adjust for no taxes. I decided to go with amazon and this size but it felt like a mistake.Ok, so with that, and adding that I have zero other rice cooker experience, here's my 2 cents review:LOOKS: As others have mentioned, it's very dark brown trim over a slightly tinted stainless. It more/less matches all my other stainless stuff and looks great, so unless you're particular about an exact match I'd say it'll fit in with just about any decor.SIZE: I mostly use this for just me, but it could easily work for 2 people and probably 4, but that's probably a stretch; so if you routinely cook for more than 3 people I'd go with the size up. If you're usually cooking for 3 people or less and want the counter space get this one - it's a great size and I only use about 1/3 of it's capacity on a per-meal basis ... having the larger one would really bug me, so I'm glad I got this size.FUNCTIONS: As others have mentioned it's about as easy as it gets: dump in the grain, dump in the water/broth (and mix-ins) and go. I use either 1/2 or 1 zoji cup per meal. I don't eat white rice, but I use the mixed setting for quinoa, freekeh, barley, etc and the porridge setting for steel-cut oats. I've tried using most of the modes and broadly they don't seem to make much difference, but the modes above work best for the grains listed. I love the GABA rice feature ... I don't know if GABA helps me, but I use it daily as a hacked timer: if you want hot food in 3 hours, dump-n-go, when you return hot stuff. Speaking of the timer - 2 timers! perfect for my weekday/weekend oatmeal.FOOD: Many have mentioned ... this thing makes some killer grains! No comparison to my stove-top technique. Not only does it make the cooking easy, the food comes out PERFECT. and every time. I use this thing about 4-5 times/day, and it's perfect every time. Some examples:* Steel-cut oats - the night before I dump in 1 zoji cup of oats, 1 cup of water, some cinnamon and it's perfect. I also put a tbs of fresh ground flax over the top and yeah I like it a bit thicker and am off dairy so no milk ... but I did try oat milk both before and after. I guess I'm a traditionalist but I like just water best. The oatmeal is perfect, and really the best oatmeal I've had as with all the other grains I've tried.* Freekeh, wheat berries, barley, etc: half-zoji-cup of freekeh, 1 zoji cup of veg broth, some soy sauce, a bunch of fresh or dried shitakes - perfect!* Spanish Rice: 1 zoji cup of brown rice, 1 zoji cup of hot salsa, 1 zoji cup of water - perfect!SUMMARY: If you cook grains often, it's a game-changer. Yes, it's also an expensive luxury, but it's such a daily (hourly) luxury that it makes it actually cheap given the usefulness. It's very simple to use, easy to clean, and makes perfect food. and,oh, who would've thought one could lose fat by going all carb??? Dreams do come true.

My wife and I are Japanophiles (travel, culture, and food) and we had planned that my retirement would include an annual trip to Japan - but then Covid put the cabash on that (and restaurants as well).My wife often (jokingly) mentioned that she dreamed of having a personal Japanese chef - the real joke is that she didn't know was that she was already married to one!After 4 years and a 1,000 or more "practice" meals, I have finally graduated to the position of Makanai (the name given to the in-house cook at traditional geisha dormitory ryokans in Kyoto - I only have one geisha in my ryokan - but I'm not complaining!)Along the way I've learned a lot about Japanese ingredients and cooking implements (e.g. I recommend the Kamado-san donabe) and after some research decided to splurge on this Zojirushi.Since I'm only cooking for 2 the size was perfect and the "fit and finish" couldn't be better (and, unlike some other models, it's actually made in Japan).I can honestly say that the rice (white or brown) turns out perfectly every time, clean-up takes no time (the quality of the non-stick metal bowl insert is in itself a thing of beauty).The only down-side is that it's slower than many less-expensive cookers (25 min vs 15 min for white rice) but it does have a 10 minute count-down timer that lets you know when it's almost ready!All I can say is that I appreciate it and enjoy it every time I use it - and sometimes that's worth the price of admission.

When a product has almost a thousand reviews and nearly all of them call the product perfect it seems fruitless to add one more, but I will because I am not the kind of person who opens something, plugs it in and sits down to robotically give it five stars, or sometimes the other way around, those that leave only a single star because they tried to save a couple of pennies by buying from one of the several listed sources other than the one sold and shipped by Amazon themselves. If they did and in the off chance it didn’t work or got scratched up one mouse click could have it refunded or replaced. I tend to ignore those as not being useful at all.THE REST OF THE STORYRather than explain what this is or what it doesn’t I will assume that you’ve read all about it and probably watched a number of videos. I want to talk about a few real life things that as a person who spent my own hard earned cash, a lot of it, I had to learn on my own. These are things not often discussed by others or found in the advertising.A FEW SURPRISESIn the pictures this model looks the same as dozens of others, of this brand and others that are styled with what I would call an awkward shape. It doesn’t lend itself well to staying out on my kitchen counter and isn’t the easiest thing to put inside a cabinet. It seems a lot of space is wasted because of its curvy exterior. I really was leaning toward going with a different brand just because of that, I wanted something more modern looking that I could leave out, since I use it almost every day, okay I changed my mind after rearranging my countertop, now my rice cooker is right there where I can get to it and serve from it and I have to admit it has a very expensive look to it.It seems everyone wants to talk about it being made in Japan. It wasn’t that many years ago that being made there was a sign of low quality and cheap materials. Now I think quality control has improved but the materials still aren’t that impressive. This thing uses a lot of plastic, especially in areas you can’t easily see. They say the stainless steel is real metal that’s been covered with a clear coat, not the silvery plastic most things are made of, but I do have small appliances that use a much higher grade of stainless. I am not at all impressed by the plastic membrane buttons on a machine in this price range. After a few years they will probably crack and wear out, at least they aren’t the touch sensitive kind of button that is all too easily pressed by mistake.Among the surprises is that digital display that everyone thinks is a removable label with artificial numbers sprinted on it, well it’s not. There is no removable membrane, those are real live digital numbers that are set at the factory. Mine arrived with the minutes set perfectly but the time zone being a few off, easily resettable. Those who are not fond of military time, however, will be let down that you can’t change the clock to 12 hour format. But to its credit the display is large, clear and very easy to read, as were all of the buttons.Moving on to things that didn’t impress me – the power cord seems very lightweight for a 700 watt appliance and it’s not grounded. It makes me a little wary about leaving it plugged in all the time, but I wonder how long the clock’s battery can stay charged without power.Other things that were maybe less than stellar are the feet, two of them have a slightly rubberized pad but the other two are hard plastic. I would not use this cooker near the edge of a kitchen counter, the risk of it sliding off if bumped is too high.I mentioned the mostly plastic construction already but it’s when you are actually using it that you begin to wonder what you paid $250 for. The latch for the top seems especially delicate and the spoon holder that we’re supposed to get excited about is practically useless.Stop – if you got this far please don’t get discouraged and think that everyone is telling tall tales and this thing isn’t worth it. All of those things I’ve mentioned are minor user experiences, the title of this story is that this may not be for everyone but that isn’t a reflection of how it’s put together anywhere near as much as how well it cooks rice and whether or not you cook it often enough and venture out from the cheapest store shelf white rice variety to justify paying this much. I bought it, at full price, because I want to experiment with some of the more exotic rice varieties and I don’t want to be held back by using a cheap generic cooker. Two-fifty was a little steep but I have a habit of buying top tier. This product didn’t wow me physically but so far I’ve found it almost impossible to cook a bad batch of rice, and that is something that is worth it to me.One final note under surprises – I see so many comments about how products have poorly written or no user manual, this one is huge by any standards. It is well written. Your experience may vary but mine came with separate manuals in both English and French. The manual is thick, well illustrated and easy to understand with clear illustration. It even has several recipes for those who, like me, want to experiment a little more with rice.THE BOWLOne of the most difficult decisions was what material the bowl would be made of. Some of the better brands are going to stainless steel or ceramic, both excellent choices for wear resistance. Zojirushi uses Teflon, which everyone knows will scratch and even flake after a few years. And a replacement bowl is unreasonably astronomically priced. To me that is the biggest downside, I wrestled in my mind a lot if I would even consider this product because of the coated bowl. Touching it for the first time I like the weight of it and the coating looks good, but it doesn’t look a great deal better than my White Tiger. Those measurement markings on the side are painted on, not embossed into the metal. I do like that the bottom is curved to fit the shape of the spoon rather than squared off like most other rice cooker bowls. Something that I am curious about that wasn’t explained anywhere is why there are very thin flexible plastic tabs sticking out of the sides of the magnetic induction system. They look very delicate and I would like to know what function, if any, they have.SPEEDI have a White Tiger rice cooker that doesn’t get the appreciation it deserves. It is a fuzzy logic style with a couple of settings but I have used it primarily for white rice. It takes about twenty minutes and it has never burned or scorched the rice, which comes out reasonably fluffy and cooked exactly the same every time. It uses a Teflon bowl, one that seems more durable than most, and with reasonable care it has lasted me at least a few years. My new Zojirushi is supposed to be capable of cooking fast, which is a relative term with this unit. I tried it at its quickest setting and was able to cook a batch of plain white rice in about 25 minutes. That’s not especially fast if you are trying to coordinate a full dinner around it.MAY NOT BE FOR YOUCertain products have aficionados, products like wine, cigars and in this case rice. While most people are happy to fix up a serving of minute rice others continually search for more and more complex varieties of this grain. If that describes you then this cooker may be made for you. But even the reviews by cooking professionals admit that the difference between what this can do compared to a good fuzzy logic machine at a fraction of the price is so small most people can’t tell them apart. I guess some people have had issues with pots that cause sticking and burning but I never have.YES OR NOThe reality is you probably don’t need this product to cook a good bowl of rice. It takes a very sensitive palate to taste a difference, if there is any, between using it and something half the price. But at no time have I felt that this is overpriced. If it’s within your budget I don’t see any reasons to avoid it. I researched literally every brand and came close several times to choosing something else. But this one had a reputation of being a superstar and I had to go for the best. I’m happy and only time will tell – I’ll post updates if any are warranted in the future.