Plastic Japanese Rice Washing Bowl with Side and Bottom Drainers

Draining off water from rice inherently loses some of the rice when pouring off the water. This washing bowl had a side strainer as well which works for draining veggies like mushrooms, or broccoli. This is made for a larger grain rice so you can pour the water off quickly. The smaller grains should go through the bottom OK, but you do have to hand agitate to keep the water flowing at times. This is both good and bad, it takes a bit more time, but it won't lose even the smallest size grains. I don't see a lot of them getting stuck in the holes either. Very inexpensive for what it is, you probably can't go wrong.There are two reasons for rinsing rice, the normal one is to wash off the excess starch and prevent the rice from clumping together after cooking, the second is to rinse off magnesium silicate a sort of fine grinding powder used to polish the rice. Brown rice for instance, is really an intermediate between removing the inedible husk leaving the bran and germ in the brown, to removing them to make white rice. Brown rice is better for you in a lot of ways, but takes longer to cook and should be presoaked. It tastes OK, but not as good as white, there is definitely a chewing difference that tells you you are eating more fiber. Not too many Chinese takeout places have it as an alternative, but one place in Grand Haven, MI did and I switched to not take up so much refined carbs in my diet. Again you have to wash it as well.If you're conserving water, or this uses up your facet filter too fast I put a large pot underneath and dunked in there a few times while hand agitating the rice. I removed the pot and ran the water direct for the final rinse, this works well if near the final rinse you want to soak for a few minutes (especially if the rice is brown). FYI, a cooks secret I've seen online a number of times if doing short grain sushi rice is to put the post washed rice in the rice cooker and add a drop of sushi vinegar, and a half sheet of nori, (toasted seaweed) before closing the lid. This helps get the right cook and texture on the rice, but it does pretty good with a proper rinsing as well.Recommended, you can't buy a better one for more, there may be automated solutions that restaurants use, but if so they'd be a lot more expensive, for price and function this cannot be beat.

I grew up washing rice in the rice pot, it's fine, but you have to be very careful while pouring the water out not to spill a little rice with it each rinse. It's doable, but a bit tedious.Then I moved and got a lovely cheap rice washer at Daiso for under $5 and it was so easy to wash rice, fill, swish, just lift the basket and the water drains into a nested bowl, the pair had handles - perfect, no lost rice, wash it even faster. But I moved and it got left behind.Tried buying a replacement at an H-mart, same nested bowl and strainer with handles configuration, but the holes are varied in size and some are too big, if you fill it all the way full with water, the rice spills out the top half of the basket, and you have to pick them out of the bowl. Hardly a time save and tedious again. Great for washing fruits and vegetables though, so I kept it.Got another replacement at H-mart, focused on getting smaller holes. Had a mesh bottom and a handle, just one piece. So I use a lid of similar diameter from one of my pots to fill with water and swish. Works fine, but it isn't high enough, sometimes vigourous swishing spills rice over the size into my solid lid, I have to check my rinsewater for errant rice. I came up with the idea of pouring it back over the sieve and it worked fine, but I couldn't go quite so fast.Then I capitulated to buying another one and decided to go online this time. Well this one's the best one yet! The shape is deep enough not to escape even if you swish enthusiastically, no hole is bigger than rice, the translucent plastic makes it easy to see where the rice is, and the surface is smooth and easy to clean. On top of that, the holes are a great number and size such that even if you run the faucet into it, it collects in the bowl so you can wash your rice before it runs out! No need to do the old rhythm of run water, swish swish, pour water out, repeat 6 times. You can continuously run water into it while swishing, and it'll maintain the right amount of water in the basin. Goes so much faster than the old way, I'm never going back. I don't pour the rice out using the spout because they tend to get caught in the holes there, but pouring out the side is easy enough. Even the last few grains are easy enough to sweep out into the rice pot because the surface is so smooth. Easily big enough even for when I'm making 6 cups of rice.It's also nice for washing fruits and vegetables. I haven't used it to sieve pasta, as I'm not sure it'll handle the heat of boiling water and I don't want to give up easy rice washing for that, so I have my old metal colander for that, but for anything you rinse or soak in cool to lukewarm water, it is a great tool. It may be a one trick gadget, but it does it's job excellently and I'm completely satisfied with my purchase. Only regret is that I didn't buy this one before all those duds.

This Japanese rice colander is perfect for washing rice (as well as vegetables/fruits, pasta, etc). Even though it is food-grade plastic, I don't recommend using it to drain boiling water. It's easy to store, lightweight, and well-made. The size of the bowl is also perfect. You can wash up to 6 cups of rice with no issues.I grew up washing rice using the rice pot, but I usually lose a bit of rice every time I pour the water out. I also never get ALL of the water out of the rice when rinsing because I don't want to lose too much rice. However, now, with this Japanese rice colander, I can easily rinse my rice and wash it at the same time. There are two sizes of holes in the colander: the bottom holes are extra small and the upper holes on the draining side are a bit larger. The design of smaller holes on the bottom of the colander is specifically created so that when you run the water into it, some water collects in the bowl with the rice so you can simultaneously wash your rice while the rest of the water drains out through the bottom continuously. The colander also is lifted on the bottom so that the water doesn't flow back into the colander. Before this colander, I had to run water into the rice bowl, wash the rice, pour the rice water out and hope I didn't lose much rice, and then repeat the same process several times.

The flow of water is more restricted than on a normal colander or strainer so you can agitate the rice in the water to remove the surface starch. Works well, my only gripe is that a few rice bits seem to get wedged in the small slits and holes and make it harder than just rinsing it clean. No big problem. It is fairly large. It would be great for making rice for a family, would be nice if there was a smaller one for use with 1 or 2 people.