Welcome to Sacred Rice

Welcome to SacredRice.com. My name is Lei (as in Hawaiian “lei”) and I’ve been cooking and eating rice my whole life. I created this site out of my love for rice and food at large.

My Love Affair with Food

My love affair with food dated back to those years when I was growing up in China. Food was a scarcity not because we couldn’t afford it, but because the Chinese government rationed how much rice and flour each family could get. Hunger seemed to be a constant theme in my life. Eating plain white rice was a rare luxury. Since then, I’ve developed an obsession and an insatiable appetite for food.

I also love cooking. To me, cooking and food are my innate expressions of love. I make sure I share it with my family and friends. Anyone who has been our guest knows that I cook for an army to make sure nobody goes home hungry. Is it due to the starvation from my childhood? Is it my obsessive-compulsive behavior? Or just out of pure love?

Which Rice Cooker to Buy?

Enough about me. Let’s talk about you and rice cookers. Last time I checked on Amazon, there were over 4,000 rice cookers and accessories by dozens of rice cooker manufacturers, not including those disguised under other “keywords” or names. For an average consumer, where would you start? How do you figure out which one to buy? Is spending more money necessarily better? This is where I will try my best to help you in my very humble way.

My Selection Criteria for Reviews

I select rice cookers to write reviews based on several criteria. For example, they have to be best sellers, with 4 star rating or better by a certain number of actual customers. The companies or manufacturers have to have solid reputations in terms of their design philosophy and product quality. From that point on, I start with my research and due diligence. I own some of the rice cookers and will buy more when possible.

I get my hands on all the key information about the rice cooker from various resource sites. I spend days disseminating, analyzing, comparing and summarizing all the information. In the end, I share it with you here in a concise and easy-to-digest format to help you make an informed buying decision.

Site Navigation

The site is organized with you, the visitor in mind. There are several ways you can get around:

1There are two top levels of navigation. The first level consists of:

• Welcome: This is the Home page for the site. Anytime you get “disoriented” on the site, just hit “Welcome” to be back to the home base.
• Reviews: This consists of two types of reviews. Hover over “Reviews”, you’ll see Rice Cooker Reviews and Related Cookware Reviews. Click on either and you will be directed to a summary of all the reviews. By the way, woks and other cookware are included in the Related Cookware category.
• Compare: This will lead you to a summary page of Compare Rice Cookers and Compare Related Cookware. For example, comparisons are drawn within the same brand or among different brands of rice cookers. A comparison may be about a specific feature/s, capacities, across-product categories (e.g. rice cooker vs pressure cooker), different heating technologies, different generations of products, etc. This will help you narrow down your search and make an informed decision between two or more products.
• Brand: It offers you a list of leading brands of rice cookers to speed up your search process. For example, if you are interested in Zojirushi rice cookers, hover over Brand and click on Zojirushi, you will be shown with all the Zojirushi rice cooker reviews. Many of the one-off reviews are lumped into the Other Brands.
• Price: This allows you to search rice cookers or woks by price range. Hover over Price, highlight Rice Cooker Price - Under $100, $100 to $200, $200 to $300, Over $300 or “Wok Price”, then click on one (e.g. $100 to $200) of the price ranges. A page with all the rice cooker or wok images will be shown. Click on the “arrow” icon on the left of the image, you will be directed to the detailed product review page.
• Buying Guides: This menu provides you the Buying Guides on rice cookers, best brands of rice cookers and woks. This is a a crash course to guide you on what a rice cooker is, types of rice cookers and key factors you need to consider before buying. There is also a rice cooker brand guide where I shared an overview of the few best brands of rice cookers worldwide. More brands will be added to this guide in the future. The same applies for woks.

Note: Please note there might be drop-down sub-menu options on the top menu indicated by a “right arrow”. Hover over the appropriate top menu and click on one of the sub-menus for your interest.

2The second top tier navigation is where you will find:

• Buying Tips: These are tidbits of information about a rice cooker or a related cookware manufacturer, interesting feature/s of a product, and some “out-of-the-box” ways to use a rice cooker to enrich your health and life.
• Comparison Chart: Here is a summary chart of all the rice cookers reviewed to date. You are provided with a bird’s-eye-view of the best-rated rice cookers with a few key features. You can click on the Model # to read a detailed review or click on the Price to check out the latest price and availability on Amazon. A chart of the best 10-cup rice cookers is available with a side-by-side comparison to help you cut down the research time.
• Rice Cooker Gallery: This is a repository of rice cooker images from all my reviews. You can click on the left “arrow” icon to read the detailed review or click on the right “search” symbol to see the full image.
• Best Wok and Other Cookware Gallery: The same goes here as in the Rice Cooker Gallery.

3 The third navigation is on the right hand side where you can:

1. Search by Rice Cooker Cup Size
2. Search by Rice Cooker Heating Technologies
3. Search by Wok Material (e.g. stainless steel)
4. Search by Wok Type (e.g.: stovetop vs. electric)
5. Search by Recent Post

4There is a search button on top of each page where you can type a keyword, a brand of rice cooker or a model # to find the related review or post.

5If you’d like to see the big picture, Sitemap is a great way to see all the reviews, comparisons and so on in one single “road map”. You can find it on the bottom of the right column or at the bottom of each page.

In the end, all these roads lead to “Rome”, that is to help you decide on which rice cooker or wok is best for your needs and for your money.

Love to Hear Your Thoughts

If you have any suggestions about the navigation, what rice cooker you’d like me to review, just leave me a comment or drop me an email at ricequeen “AT” sacredrice “DOT” com.

New content and reviews will be added on a weekly basis. Be sure to check back soon. If you like the site, please share it with your friends using the social icons on the left margin of the site.

Warmest regards,

Lei