As a Young Person™ there’s little as deeply uninspiring as cooking tech. It’s boring stuff for boring old people who do boring old people stuff.
But now? As an aged fella? Oh ho ho, I love a good kitchen appliance. Now that I think about it, tinkering with cooking gadgets might be one of the greatest benefits of being in your 30s.
And I’ve tinkered, from soup makers to halogen ovens, lord have I tinkered. Yet there’s one machine that in my experience reigns far above them all: the rice cooker.
And, today, I want to pay tribute to this magnificent machine.
At the risk of becoming that turtle boy, I like rice. It tastes good and I enjoy eating it. I never liked making it though. Well, before the rice cooker.
And one of the delightful things about writing The Rectangle is that when I thought of this topic, I realised I knew nothing about the machines. But now? I’ve sunk some hours in.
To begin with, rice cookers have been around for thousands of years. The British Museum has a rice steamer from the 500s — and it’s clear they existed long, long before then.
What we’re talking about when we talk about rice cookers then are electric rice cookers. The modern kind.
The first electric rice cooker was released by the Japanese company Mitsubishi in 1923 — although it’s important to note this was used for industrial purposes, and wasn’t available in homes.
Making these machines smaller wasn’t a particularly tough ask, but the next battle really was: putting together an automatic electric rice cooker. The model that could do it all, where all you had to do was combine water and rice, press a button, and delicious food would magically appear.
Japanese businesses strived to crack the code. Mitsubishi, Sony, and Panasonic all tried creating an automatic rice cooker, but none of them achieved it. The world was lacking. Specifically, it was lacking automatic, freshly-cooked rice to be enjoyed at home. For 30 long years after electric rice cookers were invented.
Then, in the mid-1950s, Toshiba released the ER-4. And things done changed.
In the era before this, cooking rice was one of the most onerous tasks women were forced to undertake in Asia. In a wonderful paper entitled ‘Women, Rice Cookers and the Consumption of Everyday Household Goods in Japan,’ Helen Macnaughtan goes into depth about this state of affairs.
If you don’t have time to read that though, she states that women at this time were expected to cook rice around three times a day. Because they needed huge stoves to heat up the water and had to carefully watch the cooking, this was an arduous and time-consuming task.
When I read this, I had an immediate question: if cooking rice was such a timesink, why did it take 30 years between the creation of the electric rice cooker and the automatic one?
Well, the answer is simple: sexism.
During this era in Japan, making food was deemed a job for women. Therefore, it was an issue the male-dominated tech world had no interest in dealing with. This belief was so deep, it’s even ingrained in the rice cooker’s invention.
Although the automatic electric rice cooker is said to be invented by Yoshitada Minami, it was his wife, Fumiko, who did much of the research and testing that actually got it working.
Big shout out to Fumiko. She deserves a series of huge statues across the world.
So… what were the developments that eventually enabled the automatic electric rice cooker?
Well, there were two of them: multiple pots inside the machine — in order to keep it at a consistent temperature — and a metallic strip that would bend and turn the rice cooker off when it hits 100℃.
Almost immediately, the product was a resounding success. By 1960, it’s estimated that half of all Japanese households had a rice cooker.
The rice cooker has to be considered next to the fridge, freezer, hob, and oven as the most popular kitchen appliance. It’s impossible to get accurate figures on how many households in Asia have the machines, but, as the title of this book makes clear: ‘Where There Are Asians, There Are Rice Cookers.’
What’s surprising is how slow the uptake has been in the West at large. When I was growing up, I never came across rice cookers in most of my mates’ houses. It’s only been in the last couple of years that people in my circles have gravitated towards the majestic rice cooker.
It’s a weird one. The UK loves machines that make tasks simple, it’s why every house has a kettle and a toaster. Yet many still cook rice in the worst possible manner: on the stove.
Can you do it this way? Yeah, I guess. And can you do it well? If you’re skilled and concentrating, of course. The same way you can mash potatoes with a fork rather than a masher: it’s possible, but it’s a lot more work.
A rice cooker is simply an exercise in elegance. You put the rice and some water together, press a button, and you’re cooking, baby.
This is why the rice cooker is the king of appliances. It takes something fiddly and makes it easier. Yes, I may use a kettle more — and its convenience is incredible — but boiling water isn’t a science. Making good rice on the stove is.
So bless you, sweet rice cooker, long may you reign in my kitchen. Young Me may have scoffed at you, but Older Me knows better. You’re a star.