Aroma Housewares 20 Cup Cooked (10 cup uncooked) Digital Rice Cooker, Slow Cooker, Food Steamer, SS Exterior (ARC-150SB),Black

The Aroma Housewares ARC-5000SB Professional Plus multicooker is a very good multicooker.With that said, I've considered returning once and still may return. The reason I'm thinking about returning (no fault of the cooker) is the cooker is a little larger that I thought when I purchased it. I'm in the process of consolidating my countertop cookers. I have a rice cooker, a 1.5 quart slow cooker and a 3 quart slow cooker. All of these cookers are manual. I'm would like to ideally replace them with just one cooker as long as the cooker does an adequate job and fits well. When I bought this cooker, I was under the impression that this is a 4 quart cooker as that is what's listed by Amazon. But that's incorrect as this actually is a 5 quart cooker. So, it's a little large to sit on my counter top all the time.As for the cooker besides it size,, it has a logical layout of preset buttons. The ones I've use are brown rice, steam and slow cook. A main reason I bought this cooker is it has both a low and high setting on slow cook mode. I've tried two other cookers but each only had a single temperature setting. Once didn't slow cook hot enough and the other was too hot. It is nice to have a cooker that has both settings.The cooker includes an instruction booklet, a rice laddle, and a plastic steamer basket. The booklet is understandable (not broken English like in some). The rice laddle works fine. The steamer basket works well as for withstanding the heat but I did not notice the hole are a little large say if yo wish to steam older rice. Bits of rice might all through. Not too bad, but noticeable.A big disadvantage to this cooker (like so many) is the design of having a lid that doesn't detach for cleaning. The only part of the lid that detaches is the plastic vent underside the lide. This mean to clean the lid the popular way is the wipe down under the lid. I found that instead of wiping, I'd slowly have tilt the cooker about 90 degrees enough to put the lid under soapy water while taking care to not get any water in the cooking element. That approach works but is awkward to do.I was overall happy with the results of cooking with this multicooker. Brown rice turned out good (though not as good or fast as when I used a pressure cooker). The water markings on the inner pot were pretty much not readable so I had to add not referring to them. As a steamer, that turned out good too and it's nice to have preset 5,10, 15 minutes of steam time at a touch of a button. As a slow cooker, the cooker performed well in making spaghetti sauce started off first on low then changed to high for about the last two hours.Here is what I like and dislike of this multicooker:--------------------------------------------------------Likes:- low and high settings in slow cook mode that performed well- efficient pre-programmed buttons to press- stain steel outer covering- does a good job cooking brown riceDislikes:- non removeable, difficult to clean lid design- inner pot water markings not legible- inner pot not stainless steel- steamer basket not stainless steelThere are some shortcomings to the multicooker. The biggest one is the non-removeable lid that make the lid difficult to clean. But that's not enough to penalize a star since (unfortunately) that seems the consensus of most multicookers.The cooker does a great job as a cooker handling different tasks.Though I may end up returning and looking for something that better fits size wise on my countertop, I give the Aroma Housewares ARC-5000SB Digital five stars.

I'm not one for writing reviews but after almost being dissuaded from purchasing this product by reading a slew of dumb reviews (like who decides to bake a potato in a rice cooker or who is confused at reading the simple instructions?) I decided to write one in the hopes that you will find this and this will help you make a decision whether to purchase or to not.I'm a simple guy who is terrible at cooking rice and has to feed a family of 6 regularly (not including the occasional guest that pops in unexpectedly). This rice cooker is awesome and I question why I waited so long to buy one. Sure, you could get a better one by dropping a couple hundred bucks on a fancy model but for what this does, it does it well. It takes about 35 minutes to cook rice for that many people. Yes, you can cook it faster by doing it the old fashioned way, but I find it very convenient to put the rice on first and just forget about it while I'm cooking the rest of the food. It makes juggling the stove much easier and frees up a burner slot so I could cook something else instead of micro-managing rice. The cup provided with the rice cooker is 3/4 the size of a regular cup of rice but even still one cup per person is more than enough.Put your rice in in and then fill the conveniently marked bowel with water up to the number of cups you used. For example, place 6 cups of rice and then fill with water up to the "6" marked line on the inside of the bowel. Easy-peasy. You DO have to rinse your rice off before you start the cooker to get rid of extra starch but this process only takes a minute or less and you don't need special tools or anything. I just put in the rice, add a bit of water, swirl it around, carefully drain the water out (the water will turn milky white), and literally rinse and repeat until the water is more or less clear upon draining. The rice comes out fluffy and great with nothing burned on the bottom of the pot.I've also cooked other things in the rice cooker as well like a beef stew and chili. Each time I cut up the meat, tossed it in, chopped up veggies, added water and spices, closed the lid and hit the "slow cooker" option. It says it will take 7 hours but a pot roast (cut into 3-5 inch cubes) only took about 4 hours to cook and the meat was just falling apart. SO GOOOOD!The instructions are simple and whenever you use this rice cooker please use the cup provided for easy measuring. Other than that it was worked great, cleans super easy, easy to operate, and does what it's supposed to do. You won't be disappointed. Hope this review helps! Also, feel free to ask me some questions if you have any. I'm no scientist but I might be able to help as well.

I often cook Asian-influenced dishes, which are inevitably accompanied by rice. Until purchasing this product, I used to cook rice manually in a conventional pot, but found that it was all too easy to overdo it, resulting in burned or stuck rice at the bottom of the pot; it required a lot of watching and stirring to insure that it didn't go wrong.The logical alternative was a rice cooker. While there are many inexpensive rice cookers available here at Amazon as well as in the usual stores like Walmart or Target, I looked carefully at the reviews, hoping to find a rice cooker that I could apply to other foods as well. This one stood out, and I'm delighted with it.It couldn't be simpler to use. I just drop a measured amount of rice and water into the non-stick interior pot, and press a button. 20-25 minutes later, it beeps, and the rice is cooked perfectly... no need to stir or watch. I can keep my attention on the stir-fry that I'm cooking, knowing that when the rice is done, the pot will switch to a 'keep warm' mode.I've also made oatmeal in this pot, and it works just as well. In addition to rice and oatmeal, there are other settings for brown or sushi rice, steaming, etc. The non-stick inside pot is easy to clean.

This is honestly the best rice cooker I have ever bought! We are a rice eating family and I have bought several throughout my years and this one keeps giving and still works perfectly! Through daily use and many years. Rice is cooked perfectly daily, looks great in my kitchen, good size for my family and when entertaining. The steam function is great as well! I use it to steam veggies and sweet potatoes. Makes a great housewarming and wedding gift too!