Joyoung Iron Kettle Rice Cooker F-40T88 Plus

Rice perfection – There aren't many (if any) comprehensive English reviews of this rice cooker so here are my experiences. I have always microwaved my rice because it took too long with the new fashioned rice and multicookers. However, every since my family member developed diabetes, we could no longer eat white rice which is high GI. A friend told me to look at low carb or low GI rice cookers. At first really skeptical, I realised that it's very common across many different brands in Asia, which is not surprising since they are such high consumers of rice.

After doing extensive research across different brands to the extent that I nearly lugged a whole rice cooker back from Asia, I decided to bite the bullet and try Joyoung. It's a very established brand in China but I was skeptical and it didn't help that most of the literature was in Chinese. The great thing about buying it from the Joyoung agent in Australia however is that the Australian plug and warranty, instruction manual in (albeit bad) English, and most importantly, the cooking menu is in English too.

This induction rice cooker has several functions including slowly digestible rice (remember I said bad English), 'roasted' rice, cake baking, porridge, congee, fine rice, claypot rice, steaming, and soup. After 2 months of usage, I have tried everything except the cake function - why would you want to anyway, unless you particularly liked steamed cakes?

This rice cooker is really fast (40 minutes; Instant Pot takes longer!) for low GI/carb rice and cooks a really mean Fine Rice (also 40 mins). I've also tried the roasted rice and both are insanely delicious compared to microwaved (Jasmine) rice! The fragrance and taste are truly incomparable. This is primarily due to the cast iron inner pot which unlike the usual stainless steel pots (like Instant Pot) or non-stick pots (like multicookers), is really heavy. The roasted rice function produces rice that really tastes like charcoal roasted rice. It also cooks brown rice without pre-soaking to perfection - using both the Fine Rice or Low GI Rice functions depending on what you're trying to achieve - by adjusting the uncooked rice to water ratios to roughly 1 : 1.5.

My highlight is the claypot rice function. You add the rice and it will chime (after about 25 minutes) to signal you to add the chicken and sauce. You still need to add 10 to 20 minutes (depending on bone-in or boneless chicken and cut of chicken used) with the Keep Warm function but otherwise it does a perfect claypot rice compared to all the 'rice cooker claypot rice' recipes I've tried with my multicooker and Instant Pot over the years. The best part? The pot is non-stick and the gummy sauce and stuck on rice are easy to wash off!

Size is perhaps the greatest downside with the other functions (congee, porridge, steaming, and soup). It's ok if you are cooking for 2, I think 4 adults would struggle. The soup in particular is probably only enough for 1 person once you add ingredients (e.g., chicken bones, pork bones, veg, etc). I tried putting in a 1.2kg whole chicken and it was a no-go. The pot has strict instructions not to over-fill and especially with low GI rice where it's a maximum of 3 very tiny cups (cups, soup scoop and rice paddle came with the pot) and the starchy water needs to bubble into the steaming basket on top.

Relatedly, unlike other low GI rice cookers, the starchy water is exuded on top into the steaming basket above the rice (don't ask me how but it's like distillation). Other GI rice bookers hold the rice in a steaming basket and the starchy water is 'washed' out and remains in the inner pot below the steaming basket. From a safety perspective, I was worried about removing the steaming basket (with holes!) holding scaldingly hot starchy water in order to access the inner pot with the rice below. There's an insertable handle that you can use to remove the steaming basket and scaldingly hot starchy water to pour away.

The bonus? My family member's blood sugar levels have really gone down since we started using this 2 months ago.