Only after all the water is either absorbed into the rice or evaporated, the temperature in the pot rises above 100 degrees Celsius and the thermostat signals that the rice is cooked. The rice cooker then switches from “Cook” mode to “Warm” mode and you can attend to it at your leisure.
A slow cooker attempts to maintain a setpoint for a given time period, usually.
I don't know if there is a generally accepted definition of 'rice cooker' and 'slow cooker', I have one of each in my house and the difference in those two units is that the
slow cooker uses a timer and low heat, the rice cooker always heats to 100 C until the pot temperature starts going up above 100C and then switches to 50C.
It sounds to me (cooking noob) that I can cook things faster in hte rice cooker? Instead of 4 hours of cooking in the slow cooker ... I could just cook it in 45 minutes with the rice cookers?
A ricer cooker cuts off when it gets too hot (when the water gets absorbed by the rice and the temp rises).
A slow cooker/crock pot keeps a consistent (and relatively low) temperature for a period of time. Some have timers, some don't. Some have thermostats some just have high/low settings.
A rice cooker automatically goes from "high" to "low" once the temperature inside is above 100C (once all the water has boiled). A slow cooker does not.
The slow cooker is equivalent to the 'warm' setting on the rice cooker - it applies steady heat (sometimes with a timer of some kind). The rice cooker adds one feature, it can test to see if the water in your dish has been absorbed and/or cooked off, and turn down the heat.
A rice cooker is usually smaller and hotter with a thin metal bowl instead of heavy ceramic. It usually cooks rice in 20min rather than the hours required by a slow cooker. A slower cooker turns off on a timer, a rice cooker turns off when the rice is done.
> A rice cooker is usually smaller and hotter with a thin metal bowl instead of heavy ceramic
Only the super-cheap ones, e.g. the chinese-import-for-$15 model.
Good ricer cookers, especially those from Japan (where rice cookers are something of an obsession, and bowl thickness/composition is a definite selling point) often have much much thicker bowls.
For medium price models (~$100-200) this can be 5-6mm thick, and on expensive models (I've seen them for up to $1500!) like 10-15mm of metal or 20-25mm of ceramic etc (or some secret combination).
Modern Japanese ricer cookers can also have very sophisticated heat distribution and control mechanisms, and are usable for a lot of different stuff.
I'm not sure but it seems ridiculous that you would need two of these devices when the only difference is heat and timing. Surely it would be possible to have a Rice setting vs a Slow setting?
