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Hey, Brainstuff, Lauren Boglebaum here.

Burned chunks or gooey paste can be the disappointing result of rice gone wrong.

But with the use of a rice cooker,

the odds even up for even the clutziest in the kitchen. Rice is the staple grain in many cuisines around the world. But before the invention and adoption of modern kitchen technology,

like electric and gas heating elements, cooking rice was a

finicky, hours-long process that required you to stand around over a cast-iron pot,

making adjustments to a coal or wood fire in order to get the heat just right during different parts

of the cooking process. Although simple electric rice cookers go back to the

1920s in Japan, the first commercial one for home use didn't debut until 1956 from Tashiba.

People, and perhaps specifically women, who often took on the task, were ready. Company records show that just four years later,

about half of Japanese homes had a rice cooker. These days, rice cookers range from basic models

that'll run you less than 30 bucks to ones with fancy features that cost over 500,

and although they're ostensibly meant for cooking, you know, rice, they can be very

versatile. Some people use rice cookers as their primary cooking tool for everything from

spaghetti to spare ribs to scrambled eggs. So today, let's talk about the technologies behind

rice cookers.

Rice needs two things to go from hard, shelf-stable grains to tender morsels, lots of water and lots of heat. You generally accomplish this by boiling grains of dried rice in water,

anywhere from equal parts of each to twice as much water by volume.

The rice is done when all of the water has been absorbed and or steamed off, and the grains

are whatever degree of tender you're looking for. It is ideal if you can do this without

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