The first thing that you need to know about a rice cooker is that it is not going to cook rice any faster than it will cook on a stove top. However, it may cook a lot better depending upon your cooking skills. The best part of using a rice cooker is that you do not need to tend to it the way you do when cooking it on the stove. This is a great time saver during anybody’s busy day. Of course the same can be said for cooking rice in the microwave. 
Once you get the hang of it, and understand the cooking times of your particular microwave oven, cooking rice is easy. The draw back is most microwave ovens are simply too small to cook more than a cup or two. You need a one quart dish to cook one cup of rice. Typically the smaller microwaves that can fit a one quart dish will cook up one cup of rice in about 13 minutes. This will give you two cups of rice which is fine for two people or one person for a couple of meals. But once you have the need for more rice, such as for a family, you need a rice cooker.
The best rice cooker money can buy is fundamentally no different from others. It will have a few additional features, but it is best to purchase a no frills cooker in the beginning.
The main question to answer before you start shopping is, how many cups of rice you will need each time you cook? All rice cookers specify how many cups of uncooked rice they are designed for. This number is a maximum and generally speaking, the higher the number, the larger the unit. for example:
Don’t buy a bigger cooker than you need, and make sure that you have space to store the cooker. Rice is not very expensive and in these tough economic times adding rice to your daily diet will provide needed carbohydrates at a low price.
One cup of uncooked rice will produce two cups of cooked rice. With this in mind, cooking for a family of four, when rice is only a part of the meal, a three cup rice cooker may be fine. The important thing to remember is not to buy a cooker with a larger capacity than you require. You can read through rice cooker reviews online to discover the many extra features that come with a rice cooker, but here again, only buy a cooker with
