You can cook rice in a rice cooker, but how about steaming some vegetables as well? You can do that if you have an electric rice cooker with a vegetable steamer. Most electric rice cookers ship with a steamer tray for steaming vegetables. These steamer baskets are usually made from plastic. Other rice cookers have aluminum or stainless steel steamer baskets.
We have chosen three rice cookers to review. The Aroma ARC-914SBD has a plastic vegetable steamer tray. The Zojirushi NS-TSC10 has a BPA-free plastic steamer basket. The Aroma NutriWare rice cooker has a stainless steel vegetable steamer. We think that one of these might be the best rice cooker for steaming vegetables.
Rice Cooker With Plastic Vegetable Steamer
The Aroma ARC-914SBD 8-cup cooked rice cooker has a plastic vegetable steamer and a separate steam button for steaming vegetables. You can steam vegetables on its own without cooking any rice. You may also cook both rice and vegetables at the same time.
Do not try to cook the maximum amount of rice when cooking rice as well as steaming vegetables. The rice will double in size when cooked and there will not be enough room for 8 cups of cooked rice as well as the steamer tray.
The instruction manual has a steaming guide with approximate steaming times for vegetables. Insert the vegetable steamer towards the end of a rice cooking cycle and take it out when the vegetables are cooked. Be careful of the hot steam and wear oven mitts to protect your hands.
The basic features of this Aroma rice cooker with a vegetable steamer are:
- 15-hour delay timer.
- Aluminum cooking bowl with nonstick coating.
- Automatic keep warm.
- Cooked rice capacity is 2 to 8 cups (6-ounce cups).
- Digital control panel with buttons for delay timer, white rice, brown rice, steam.
- Plastic steam tray for steaming vegetables.
- Rice cooker is built to North American electrical standards.
- Includes plastic steamer basket, serving spatula and rice measuring cup.
What do we like about the Aroma ARC-914SBD?
- It has a separate cook setting for cooking white rice or brown rice.
- It cooks brown rice slower and at a lower temperature for tasty brown rice.
- Furthermore, it steams vegetables quite well.
- The steam vent in the attached lid does not sputter or leak.
What do we dislike about this Aroma electric rice cooker?
- It is not stated whether the plastic steam tray is BPA-free.
- The hinged lid is more difficult to keep clean than a simple removable glass lid.
This Aroma rice cooker and vegetable steamer has been selling like, uhm, rice cakes for quite some time. It is a very popular rice cooker that is also very affordable. You may view prices for the Aroma ARC-914SBD at Amazon.
Rice Cooker With BPA-Free Vegetable Steamer
The Zojirushi NS-TSC10 5.5-cup uncooked rice cooker has a BPA-free plastic steamer basket for steaming vegetables. However, if you want to cook rice and steam vegetables at the same time, you will realistically only be able to cook a small amount of rice since you need to leave a space for the steaming basket which fits into the inner cooking pot.
Here is a summary of its most important features and functions:
- Automatic keep warm as well as extended keep warm.
- Clock and delay timer function.
- Included accessories: nonstick rice spatula, spatula holder, rice measuring cup.
- It is built according to North American electrical standards.
- Microcomputer automatically adjusts cooking conditions according to rice type.
- Retractable power cord.
- Steam setting and BPA-free steaming basket.
- Thick aluminum inner cooking pot with nonstick coating.
- Menu settings: white/sushi, mixed, porridge, sweet, brown, cake and steam.
The best feature of this Zojirushi rice cooker and steamer is, of course, the BPA-free steamer basket and steam menu setting.
What do we dislike about it? The Zojirushi NS-TSC10 is a great rice cooker, but it has a higher price tag. Another thing to keep in mind is that, due to the microcomputer adjusting the cooking temperature and time, rice generally takes twice as long to cook when compared to a cheap single switch rice cooker.
The Zojirushi NS-TSC10 fuzzy logic rice cooker is more expensive than the Aroma rice cooker, but it is also a popular rice cooker. Rice might take longer to cook in this rice cooker, but the results are worth the wait. You may get prices or read reviews for the NS-TSC10 at Amazon.
Rice Cooker With Stainless Steel Vegetable Steamer
If you do not want a plastic steamer basket, even if it is rated as BPA-free, then a rice cooker with a stainless steel vegetable steamer is the way to go. The Aroma NutriWare 14-cup rice cooker has a steamer tray made from surgical-grade 304 stainless steel that is not very deep. The tray holds about two servings of vegetables.
The key features of the Aroma Nutriware electric rice cooker are:
- Removable glass lid.
- Stainless steel inner cooking pot.
- Stainless steel vegetable steamer basket.
- This rice cooker is built for North American electrical standards.
- It can cook 2 to 7 cups of uncooked rice (6-ounce cups) to produce about 4 to 14 cups of cooked rice.
- Digital control panel with buttons for white rice, brown rice, saute-then-simmer, steam and keep warm.
We like the glass lid because it is easier to keep clean than a hinged lid. The stainless steel steamer tray and cooking pot are also dishwasher-safe.
The only thing that we do not like is that the steamer tray is too small to steam enough vegetables for a large family.
The steam function works well and needs only a small amount of water to steam the vegetables. You may get prices for the Aroma Nutriware rice cooker at Amazon.
Conclusion
In the long term, it is probably safer for your health to choose a rice cooker with a stainless steel steamer tray. Then you don’t have to worry about possibly harmful plastic chemicals leaching into your vegetables or rice. Stainless steel does not leach chemicals into the food being cooked, and it does not peel off or rust.
All things considered, the healthiest rice cooker with a steamer basket for steaming vegetables is probably the Aroma NutriWare 14-cup cooked rice cooker with its stainless steel vegetable steamer basket.
Thank you for reading our review of rice cookers with vegetable steamer baskets.