Kumo YumCarb Rice Cooker

If money were no object, I'd import a Japanese Zojirushi or Tiger without question. But here in the UK, dealing with voltage converters and £300+ import fees is a hard pass. Instead, I picked the Yum Asia Kumo up on sale for £72. It is hands down the best value fuzzy logic cooker with a high quality ceramic bowl in this market. It is cheaper than its sibling, the Panda Mini, because it cuts the bloat. You mainly loses the 'cake baking' mode, but seriously who bakes cake inside a rice cooker? Instead, you gain the YumCarb basket and a larger capacity in return. It focuses entirely on being a rice cooker, though you can throw vegetables into the steel basket to steam alongside the rice for efficiency. For those new to fuzzy logic, the included guidebook covers the essentials nicely. To get great rice, the process is simple: measure, wash, fill to the lines, and select the function you want. Cleaning is straightforward. The 2mm thick 'Ninja' ceramic bowl is heavy, durable, and wipes clean instantly, avoiding the peeling issues common with cheap Teflon bowls that degrade after a few months. The star of the show is the YumCarb function, boasting a 25% carb reduction. Honestly, this is mostly marketing fluff. My photo shows this mode with Mai Thai AAA Fragrant Rice. The 25% reduction isn't a lie, but don't expect a health miracle; most of the nutrition remains in the grain, so the blood sugar impact is minor. The real benefit of this mode is texture control. By suspending the rice during the steam phase, it prevents the grains from sitting in starchy water. This forces cheaper long grain rice to separate and fluff up, giving it a premium consistency that's hard to get with a standard boil. However, a critical warning: Do not use the YumCarb mode if you are using premium Japanese rice (like Koshihikari) or sticky rice. You pay extra for that specific sticky texture, and this mode will strip it away, leaving you with expensive, dry pellets. Use this function for supermarket long grain only. Because fuzzy logic mimics Japanese cooking, the default result leans toward soft, sticky rice. In my photo, I used slightly less water to get a drier, firmer grain. It is easy to experiment to find your preferred texture since the cooker is quite consistent. It has the sleek look of a modern appliance, but the foundation is perfected, reliable, old school Japanese technology. An easy 5 stars for the value alone.

Only used for brown rice so far. First attempt using exactly the required amount of water took about 35 minutes and produced rice that was a bit on the chewy size. Next time I added slightly more water ( just above the marked line) - this produced really nicely cooked rice, but took over an hour to do it ! I guess this is OK provided you can wait that long - just set the thing off sufficiently in advance. I really like that it’s easy to measure the amounts of rice and water. ( using supplied cup and markings on the inside of the bowl), and its then a single button push and leave the thing completely alone until it beeps. Keep warm function once it completes is useful. Would be nice to have more indication of how long it has to go (I suspect it doesn’t know). Feels solidly made, and is nice and compact for smaller kitchens. I guess the price is pretty top- end, but I feel you get what you pay for. Don’t think I’d want to wait 30-40 minutes for porridge, so will probably only ever use it for rice. Acid test it that I think we’ll be eating more rice now we have this beast.

I have never been able to consistently cook perfect rice, potentially 1 in 3 would be of an acceptable quality... until now. This is my first rice cooker and I read many, many reviews before my purchase. I don't have any comparison, but this is amazing. I was initially going to purchase the smaller size because I had limited storage space, but I was concerned about the volume of rice that I would be able to cook so opted for this mid size unit. In hind sight the smaller option would probably have covered my needs as I am yet to cook more than 3 cups of rice. However I am happy to have the option to cook more if required and this is so compact that it can still be stored easily. The rice comes out perfectly every time whatever type of rice I cook. I find the rice has a little more flavour when I don't use the carb reducing sieve type insert (but this is useful for washing the raw rice). The spillage that many reviews refer to when opening the lid can be avoided if you open it slowly. This was genuinely an amazing purchase that I regret not having made years ago. Prior to this, I would buy the microwave bags of rice for convenience and consistency. The rice i can now cook for myself is remarkable in comparison. A few moments preparation and a push of a button is all that is required, then just leave it to do it's work. The stay warm function means I don't even have to time the start, I can prepare way in advance of dinner and have the rice ready for me when I want it. I have used the keep warm for 4 or 5 hours without the rice burning. Allegedly it can work for up to 24hrs but I've not tried it. This is not a cheap option for a rice cooker but as I was probably using 6 to 10 pouches of the microwave stuff previously at a cost of about £1 a pouch, it will pay for itself very quickly. The only minor negative that I have discovered is that it does create quite a lot of steam. I get around this most of the time by placing it within the catchment zone of my extractor but anywhere that isn't directly beneath the upper cupboards in the kitchen works if the hob is in use. Sorry it's a long review but I am very, very happy about it and recommend it to literally anyone who will listen!