I tested the KitchenAid Grain and Rice Cooker and now I’m addicted to using it

I like to eat plant-based meals, but I was tired of almost burning my rice or having it come out gummy and wet on the stovetop. I also like saving money by buying dry beans in bulk, but I have little patience to wait overnight for the beans to soak before being able to cook them. So, to help me eliminate the guesswork of cooking rice, beans and other favorites like oats and quinoa, I started weighing my options from among Underscored’s top-tested picks for the best rice cookers and the best pressure cookers that our expert reviewers have tested in recent years.

While I know any of our picks from brands such as Breville, Cuckoo, Instant Pot, Kuhn, T-fal and Zoyjirushi would be a sound choice, I instead decided to give an entirely new contender a try: the KitchenAid Grain and Rice Cooker. The company claims its new all-in-one appliance can automatically sense and weigh your rice or grains — and then dispense the correct amount of water from its water tank before cooking it all to perfection. Sounds like a dream, but I wanted to see if its claims were true so I just spent the last few months testing it.

Spoiler alert: I won’t ever go back to cooking rice, beans or other grains on my stovetop because the KitchenAid Grain and Rice Cooker is just that good.

What we liked about it

Perfectly cooked rice every time

I’ve used the KitchenAid Grain and Rice Cooker almost daily for the past few months, testing its ease of use, performance and consistency while I make meals. After using it to cook countless batches of perfectly fluffy white and brown rice, mounds of tender, perfectly cooked black beans, and steaming bowls of, again, perfectly cooked quinoa and soft steel-cut oats, I can vouch that the KitchenAid Grain and Rice Cooker is a kitchen appliance that does what it claims.

Excellent variety

The sheer variety of rice, beans and grains this cooker makes is amazing and so helpful for home cooks who don’t necessarily have the skill or time to whip up their own rice, beans, quinoa, oats or other grains from scratch. I made batch after batch of jasmine rice, quinoa and steel-cut oats throughout testing and each batch turned out perfectly. Before this, I never cooked dry chickpeas from a bag and instead relied on the cooked canned variety. But the KitchenAid Grain and Rice Cooker soaked the dry chickpeas and then cooked them, and it turned out so well that I don’t think I’ll ever reach for a can again. Freshly cooked chickpeas just taste better to me.

Easy to handle and clean

The nonstick ceramic cook bowl on this machine is light enough to lift with one hand even when full plus it’s easy to clean after use. All I need to do after this machine stops cooking is first use an oven mitt to lift the still-hot nonstick bowl and set it aside. Then I wait for the bowl to cool off a bit and transfer the cooked food to a serving dish. Next, I always opt to clean the bowl with a soft sponge by hand in my kitchen sink to maximize the life of the nonstick coating. The inner lid can get some food particles or steam on it, but it’s also simple to clean by wiping it with a sponge. Though I always clean my cooker by hand, KitchenAid says that the nonstick bowl, inner lid, water tank, water tank lid and steam basket are all dishwasher-safe.

Finally, I usually dump any remaining water out of the water tank just so I can fill it up with fresh water immediately before using it the next time, and so that I don’t use funky 24-hour-old water in my cooking next time (I’m the same way when I use my single-serve coffee maker, always using fresh water for each brew).

Keep Warm setting

A really convenient feature on the KitchenAid Grain and Rice Cooker is its “Keep Warm” setting that keeps food warm until it is time to serve. It is an automatic feature on the machine that turns on when cooking has been completed. I really appreciate this feature as it lets me cook up a batch of rice, beans or grains but not have to immediately remove the cooked food once it’s done cooking. This comes in handy if I’m still cooking the rest of the meal on my stovetop, oven, toaster oven or air fryer. I have peace of mind knowing my rice or other food is going to remain warm until my family and I can actually sit down and start eating. That’s because the “Keep Warm” setting automatically defaults to 2 hours, keeping the food inside the nonstick bowl warm without drying it out. I find my rice remains fluffy and moist even after 2 hours in the nonstick bowl. This setting can also be manually set for up to 6 hours and turned off manually at any time.

Steamer basket

It was simple for me to cook up batches of single ingredients like white rice, brown rice, quinoa, steel-cut oats, black beans, chickpeas and other beans, and I used this cooker mainly for those kinds of tasks during testing. Simply because that’s what I heavily relied on it for to make my daily meals. But I also want to point out that this cooker can do more than that. KitchenAid includes a separate, black, heavy-duty plastic steamer basket, which fits inside the bowl and under the lid during cooking. You can use it to simultaneously steam up vegetables as your rice or farro or other ingredients are cooking in the bowl below it.

To make Steamed Sweet Potatoes Stuffed with Farro (a recipe in KitchenAid’s included recipe book), you only need to follow a few easy steps. You would first select the Farro menu option on the LED screen, set the cooking liquid to “water,” and choose “regular” to confirm the texture setting. Before starting the cooking cycle, you would place the sweet potato chunks into the steamer basket over the farro. You would then steam the sweet potatoes until fork tender (about 30-35 minutes) during the farro cooking time. Once that’s done, the rest of the recipe directions help you continue making the meal.

Recipe book

As mentioned, KitchenAid includes a helpful recipe book in the box that I discovered while unboxing the cooker and setting it all up. The recipes are provided in English, French and Spanish, and there are several included that show you how you can use the included steamer basket mentioned above to make multi-ingredient meals. The following is a sampling of the recipes in the book and the additional kitchen cookware each recipe requires.

Vegan and vegetarian recipes

Fish, beef and lamb recipes

What we didn’t like about it

Bowl capacity

I wish it had a bigger bowl to make more rice or beans and other grains at a time since I like to batch cook on Sundays for the week. As it is, I could add around three cups of dry rice at a time or the same amount of beans or quinoa. So, the cooker is the perfect appliance for an individual who lives alone, for a couple who dines together or for a small family who cooks daily. But for, say, a large group gathering around the holidays, it will probably require you to use it a couple of times in a row to make enough for four or more people.

Countdown timer

Once the KitchenAid Grain and Rice Cooker finishes weighing the ingredients I place in its bowl, it dispenses the needed amount of water and then its LED screen shows an estimate of how long it needs to cook the food via a white progress bar that moves from left to right at the top of the screen as the food is cooking. The LED screen initially flashes “35 minutes,” or whatever length of time, along with the phrase “Rice cooking” or “Beans cooking” or whatever type of food. But it doesn’t show a countdown timer until there’s 10 minutes left to cook. (See time-lapse video above for an example from when I cooked some rice).

Before that 10-minute mark, though, I could only tell the status of the cooking process when I checked that white progress line at the top of the screen. It would be nice to have a countdown timer continuously showing the cooking time left, even if that amount is an estimation at first.

Bottom line

The KitchenAid Grain and Rice Cooker consistently and reliably measures, adds water, cooks up — and also keeps warm — so many different types of rice, beans and grains that you’ll be putting away your measuring spoons and pots, and reaching for this convenient rice plus grain cooker in one.