Cosori 5L Rice Cooker Review
A versatile multi-cooker that handles more than rice
Verdict
The Cosori 5L Rice Cooker is a solid multi-cooker that does more than just cook rice. It has a good capacity, modern looks, and a load of useful functions. Cooking results are strong across a variety of its functions, although that long preheat time is hard to ignore.
Pros
- Good looking
- Reasonably easy to use
- Excellent performance across a range of food
Cons
- Slow preheat time
Key Features
- 5L cooking capacity:Cosori’s Rice Cooker offers a nice five-litre capacity, giving you a fair bit of room for cooking food for a small to medium-sized family.
- 9 different cooking modes:It also comes with 10 different cooking modes, including 3 specific rice modes.
Introduction
The Cosori 5L Rice Cooker aims to bring a little more versatility to an appliance that traditionally has a singular use case.
It’s more than just your average rice cooker, adding a host of other useful functions that make it a reasonably competent multi-cooker for more than just rice.
At £119.99/$99.99, this isn’t the cheapest option compared to more onventional cookers, but it undercuts similarly quirky options such as the Ninja Speedi by quite some distance. I’ve been testing Cosori’s rice cooker to see how well it stacks up.
Design and features
- Modern looks
- Convenient accessories
- Lots of useful functions
The 5L Rice Cooker is in-keeping with some of Cosori’s more recent appliances, with a sleek two-tone black and silver chassis. It’s all made of hard plastic, feeling quite sturdy, while this particular appliance also doesn’t take up much space on a worktop despite its modest five-litre capacity.
As opposed to offering a lid that twists off or can be removed, Cosori’s rice cooker opts for a flip-up lid that’s operated by the big silver button towards the front of its top side. Towards the back of the top side is where the Rice Cooker houses its exhaust, which lets steam out of the top when the lid is closed, which is mighty useful.
Inside, the Rice Cooker comes with a larger inner pot that can be filled with whichever ingredients you’re cooking, as well as a steam basket for, well, steaming things such as vegetables or otherwise. Both are removable for ease of use and ease of cleaning. It also comes with a convenient set of accessories including a measuring cup, as well as a Cosori-branded ladle and rice paddle for stirring.
All of the controls are housed on the large control panel on the front side of the Rice Cooker, which reveals its true powers. There are dedicated settings for brown and white rice, as well as for grains, proving this cooker has the rice-related chops you’d expect. However, it can also do a whole lot more – as well as a mightily useful Keep Warm mode, the Cosori 5L Rice Cooker also operates as a steamer and a slow cooker, as well as having dedicated modes for soup, cakes and jams or sauces. It can also saute, too.
With each of these modes, the Rice Cooker can only set the time as it sets the temperature automatically based on the chosen function. This takes some getting used to, especially if you’re using the Rice Cooker in the same way you would a stovetop or a hob, which provides an element of control. With this in mind, it is intuitive to use, as you simply select the mode you want, set the time with the plus and minus buttons, and then hit start. Before it starts cooking, the Rice Cooker will need to preheat, and this can take an especially long time, regardless of the selected mode.
Once you’re done with the inner pot and/or the steam basket, they can both be put in the dishwasher. I avoided this in my testing and instead chose to handwash them. Doing so is easy, and they were clean, dry and put back in a matter of minutes. It is handy to know they are dishwasher-safe though, if you don’t want to go through the process of hand-washing them.
As with Cosori’s other appliances, the Rice Cooker also comes with a recipe book, quick start guide and manual for ease of use. The recipe book is full of handy recipes to get you rolling, while the quick start guide also offers tips for cooking rice, as well as for performing a test run on first use.
Performance
- Cooks rice well
- Also fantastic as a steamer
- Long preheat time plagues all modes
Over the course of my few weeks with the Cosori 5L Rice Cooker, I cooked a variety of different items to gauge its cooking performance. For my first test, I chose to steam some broccoli. I filled the water in the inner pot to the handy steam line indicator, placed the broccoli in the basket, and set it to Steam for 8 minutes. The broccoli came out aldente and wasn’t mushy—an excellent start, in spite of the eight-minute preheat.
As well as working well as a steamer, I also chose to test out how well the Rice Cooker dealt with its namesake. I’ve often wanted to see how well a rice cooker dealt with the hassle of cooking a risotto, and the Rice Cooker made it a doddle. Using the white rice and short grain settings for 20 minutes initially, it managed to reduce the rice and stock down well, although was still on the runnier side. Adding in red onions and parmesan to the mix and a dash more hot water helped matters, and after 35 minutes, the Rice Cooker produced a result that resembled a risotto well with the correct consistency.
I then turned to the recipe book for a couple of different ideas. The soft-boiled eggs recipe was a particular highlight, being cooked for six minutes on the Steam function in the basket before being placed in ice-cold water for a minute so they stopped cooking. The eggs came out with a rich flavour and runny yolks, as expected.
Cosori’s recipe book also makes a lot of using the Rice Cooker to boil down pasta in water and to be used as a replacement for your hob for cooking such dishes. In adapting the carbonara recipe slightly, it did a fantastic job of cooking the pasta and wilting spinach simultaneously, even if it took a while for the water to boil initially. It also browned off the bacon well in its Saute mode. The Keep Warm function also came in handy when combining the egg and cheese mixture with the pasta to ensure everything was cooked through over a lower heat.
I also used the recipe book’s guidance for a tomato pasta recipe using the Jam and Sauce setting. I used the sauté option to cook onions, tomatoes and powdered California garlic for 5 minutes. I also then added basil, Worcestershire sauce and a tin of chopped tomatoes to make up the bulk of the sauce before adding the pasta back in, set the Rice Cooker into Jam/Sauce for 25 minutes as per the recipe book instructions, and then left it. The sauce came out with an excellent consistency, with enough to coat the pasta, and had an awful lot of flavour.
For a final test, I cooked a beef stew in a similar fashion to in the Cosori 5.7L Pressure Cooker by sauteing some diced beef off, before adding tomatoes, onions, powdered California garlic, passata, Worcestershire sauce and mushrooms, and putting the Rice Cooker on Slow Cook for five hours. The meat melted, while the sauce cooked down and came out with an excellent consistency.
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Should you buy it?
You want a versatile multi-cooker:
For the price, the Cosori 5L Rice Cooker is an excellent option for cooking rice, as well as other types of food, vegetables and pasta included.
You want instant heat:
Where the Cosori 5L Rice Cooker falls down is with its chronically slow preheat time. If you’re after an appliance with speed on its side, you may want to look elsewhere.
Final Thoughts
The Cosori 5L Rice Cooker is a solid multi cooker that does more than just rice. It has a good capacity, as well as offering modern looks and a selection of useful functions. Cooking results are strong across a variety of its functions, although that long preheat time is hard to ignore. While other options including the excellent Ninja Speedi aren’t rice cookers, it does have briskness on its side, and also acts as an air fryer, which may be more useful for generalists.
How we test
Unlike other sites, we test every multi cooker we review thoroughly over an extended period of time. We use industry standard tests to compare features properly. We’ll always tell you what we find. We never, ever, accept money to review a product.
Find out more about how we test in our ethics policy.
Used as our main multi cooker for the review period
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FAQs
The Cosori 5L Rice Cooker has a total of 10 functions, including three specific ones for rice, as well as the likes of Saute, Slow Cook, Jam/Sauce and a Keep Warm mode.
Full specs
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Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
