First you must understand how a Rice Cooker works. They start by boiling the rice and monitoring the temperature at the same time. Once all of the water has boiled away, the temperature then starts to rise slowly, which in turn tells the rice cooker that the water is completely gone and to turn off or turn down. What this really means is if you don’t put in enough water and when it boils away, your rice will be under-cooked; or if you use too much water then it will boil longer thus making the rice over-cooked.
What you need to do is come up with the perfect ratio of rice to water. Occasionally you will find a box of rice which has instructions on the back or the front of the package, but a good ratio for most Rice Cookers is: 1 cup rice = 1 cup water, keeping in mind that 1 cup of uncooked rice is really 3/4 cup and the water is 1 cup. When done, this combination should produce about a 2 cup meal.
Before cooking your rice in a rice cooker, you should always make sure the rice is of good quality and you should rinse it thoroughly. Place the rice in a large container filled with water, swirling the rice as you fill. Pour out the cloudy water and repeat. Do this a couple of times until the water start to look clear. When done, drain the rice as very thoroughly, then place it in the cooker, remember to add the right amount of water, turn the rice cooker on, cover it with the lid and start cooking.
Why You should always rinse your rice is that the anti-caking agent in todays rice actually absorbs in the rice and binds some of the water in the pot into a thin film around each grain as the rice cooks. This will prevent the water from being absorbed into the inner portions of the grain as quickly as it should, and also uses up some of the water so the cooker detects the end of the cooking cyle earlier, which means by the time the cooker has finished cooking, the insides of the grains are still slightly underdone. You could add a bit more water, to cause the rice cooker to cook longer, and so get the rice properly done on the inside, but this has the result of making the outside of the rice slightly overdone. So it would appear that the best you can accomplish this way is both overdone and underdone at the same time, which isn’t the same as done inside and out.
