It seems as if a theme that we’ve been observing this year is that people want their food to be special, but with minimal fuss.  Everyone seems to be rushed and particularly overwhelmed this time of year.

63 percent of consumers are reporting that they enjoy hosting parties, according to an NPD report on holiday entertaining.

Time saving and easy-to-use appliances are essential for a busy kitchen or cook. Pressure cookers and steamers are among the most popular items.  With minimal effort they enable quicker preparation perfect vegetables, meats, fish & much more.  Similarly, blenders are multi-function these days and can be used in food preparation as well as to make those festive holiday drinks – plus they come now in a wide array of colors to match the décor of your kitchen!

Along these lines, we’ll be testing out the AquaChef Smart Cooker (pictured left), which uses the sous vide cooking method for ‘foolproof’ cooking of foods to the perfect internal temperature. Stay tuned!

To bring the spirit of the season into your home, NPD also points to products such as colorful dining linens, cutlery (such as carving/chef knives), eco-friendly cutting boards, and winter and holiday themed dinnerware patterns.

“As consumers are preparing their homes to entertain this holiday season, products that furnish seasonal touches,” are expected to be welcomed additions and gifts, according to Debra Mednick, executive director of The NPD Group’s home business.

As a heavy coffee drinker who loves a great cup of coffee, that’s interesting. But is it true? Apparently yes.

Looking first at the National Coffee Association, “Water Temperature During Brewing: Your brewer should maintain a water temperature between 195 – 205 degrees Fahrenheit for optimal extraction. Colder water will result in flat, under-extracted coffee while water that is too hot will also cause a loss of quality in the taste of the coffee.”

Fine, but is water temperature a problem with most coffee makers? According to CooksIllustrated.com, apparently yes: “We made…coffee, this time measuring the water temperature throughout the brew cycle. And here we made a key discovery: Most of these machines were too cool, spending most of the brewing cycle struggling to bring the water into the right temperature range. Many didn’t reach the correct temperature until the last minute or two of brewing — and then kept climbing, scorching the grounds as the last few cups dripped into the carafe.”

So in principle, Cloer’s temperature stabilization technology could indeed be important.  Since the proof is in the tasting, we conducted the following taste test:  We made two identical batches of black coffee using the Cloer as well as our old office machine (a well-known premium brand, albeit one that needs descaling).  The coffee we used was a freshly opened bag of Starbucks® French Roast whole bean coffee, which probably should be pushing the envelope on bitterness – hence, a good test.  We then went heavy on the amount of coffee versus water (we like strong coffee; 10 coffee measures for 7.5 cups of liquid (1.33:1); this compares to Starbucks’ 1:1 ratio), pushing the test even further.

As a heavy coffee drinker who loves a great cup of coffee, that’s interesting. But is it true? Apparently yes.

The answer was startling.  Using the exact same amount of coffee, the Cloer was too strong, even for us.  The obvious reason, as we thought about it, was that with the Cloer getting more flavor extraction from the same amount of coffee that we had been using, we needed less coffee to get to the same strength level.

So the solution was to adjust the Cloer closer to the normal 1:1 standard.  The result:  both cups of coffee were now equally strong.  But the Cloer was able to provide something we hadn’t experienced with home brew machines – strong coffee with more flavor but without bitterness.  It’s a noticeably better cup of coffee.  Plus we save 25% on the amount of coffee beans needed.

So net-net we’re sold on the Cloer as delivering on its promises.  Yes, you can buy a much cheaper drip machine for $20-40, or premium brand-name machines for $50-100, versus $150 list/$130 street price for the Cloer.  But for one of life’s simple pleasures – a really good cup of coffee in the morning – the few cents a day difference is a no-brainer.  And when you factor in a 25% savings in coffee beans (for us, that comes to around $140 annually), the Cloer actually ends up saving you money!

A new resource for dealers and distributors that focuses on turning home appliances, home environment and home-care products into a new profit center was launched within the January 2012 issue of Dealerscope Magazine: Housewares Retailing (HR).

HR is about delivering the latest insights, strategies, information and knowledge focused on home appliances (i.e., mixing, brewing and blending), improving the home environment and showcasing home care products for enhanced digital living – and greater business profitability. This includes incremental business opportunities for retailers to achieve strategic competitive advantage in the home, housewares and CE industries.

HR discusses leveraging consumer engagement trends and implementing customer-centric retailing strategies for greater manufacturer and channel profitability. It also covers the intersection between housewares, appliances and personal care products with devices that enhance the home environment, including air or water quality. HR identifies the key and most exciting industry categories and products that connect a consumer’s love of food and healthy living at home with the digital lifestyle.

HR will appear in each monthly issue of Dealerscope. To receive your FREE issue of Dealerscope, please visit www.dealerscope.com/docs/subscriptions.

C4’s Susan Schreiner will be editor.  Feel free to contact her at susan@c4trends.com

We test and review products in different ways.  One way is in a ‘lab’ environment and the other is to put the product and package into the hands of a prospective user – with no pre-instructions by us except to follow the instructions from the manufacturer.  In this case, once we tested it we asked a guy to make rice – someone who generally avoids the kitchen, unless it’s to help clean-up dishes.

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As a white male gaigin, what do I know about cooking rice?  Answer: very little, but after testing the Zojirushi NP-GBC05 rice cooker, I now know a lot more, and as a result, I now know how to cook rice.  Or at least, I know enough to let Zojirushi do the cooking for me (and do it extremely well).  As a result, our family now eats a lot more rice at home.

As a starting point, over the years, on those rare occasions when I cooked rice, the procedure was:

1. Dump some rice in a pot.
2. Put in enough water to cover the rice
3. Bring the water to a boil as fast as possible
4. Drop the stove temperature to low and put a lid on the pot
5. Check the pot every once in a while and stir the rice
6. When all the water is gone, eat.

There were several problems with this.  First of all, a good deal of the rice always would stick to the bottom of the pan, wasting up to half the rice and necessitating an overnight soaking before I could clean the pot (maybe a Teflon pot would have been a good idea here, but they invariably scratch over time).  Secondly, the moisture content of the ‘cooked’ rice would vary dramatically.  If I were in a rush, the rice would be overly gloppy.  If I forgot to watch the pot, the rice would be burnt.  It almost never came out ‘right.’  The problem wasn’t just me.  My wife and kids were equally incompetent.

While my lack of rice skills was very apparent over the years (resulting in my minimizing the amount of rice cooked in favor of heating up frozen French fries), I never did anything about it, and instead suffered in silence.  I would note, however, that whenever I went out to eat in an Asian restaurant, the quality of that rice was far superior to anything I made at home.  What did they know that I didn’t?  Clearly, they used professional rice cookers.  Perhaps I could have gone shopping for a home-sized rice cooker.  I vaguely knew that such things existed, but was it worth it?

All of that changed, when the people at Zojirushi sent C4Trends its model NP-GBC05 rice cooker for review..  Just looking at the box, it became clear that I was entering an alternative universe with induction heating, heat and moisture sensors, as well as “fuzzy logic,” whatever that means for cooking rice.  All this sounded exciting!

Opening up the box, I also was happy to see that there was a rice pot insert with a non-stick surface, along with a special rice spatula that would not scratch the surface.  No more pot soaking! Perhaps Zojirushi was going to make rice cooking idiot-proof!

OK, so how to proceed?  It quickly became apparent that to cook different types of rice requires different water-to-rice ratios (brown seems to need more than white) and cooking times (brown again needs more time).  Fortunately, the cooking pot has different measuring water levels for white rice, sushi rice and brown rice.  This makes things relatively idiot-proof.

I also learned for the first time from the product manual that you are supposed to wash the rice before you cook it, to get rid of the excess starch, thereby keeping the rice from sticking too much.  Who knew?

Issue 1:  So far so good.  But a couple of challenges emerged related to the measuring process.   Zojirushi provides a measuring cup for rice (actually two cups, one of which is for prewashed rice. How does one get prewashed rice in the US?).  The measuring cup lets you measure out up to one cup of rice at a time.  Fine, but at first glance the cup seemed a little small by American cup standards.  After doing a quick Internet search, it turned out that a Japanese rice cup is 180 ml, or 75% of an American cup of 240ml.  This means that if you lose the Zojirushi cup, you can’t substitute a standard US measuring cup unless you remember to subtract 25%.

Issue 2:  What happens if you use more or less water?  What happens to the rice? Not clear from the manual.

Issue 3:  Timing.  The instruction manual gives a range of times for cooking different types of rice.  For plain white rice, the suggested range is 40-50 minutes, while for brown rice the range is 75-95 minutes (there also is a 20 minute rapid cycle for white rice, if you are in a rush and don’t mind a somewhat tougher rice texture).

Another timing challenge: deciphering how the timer should be set.  I quickly figured out that the machine wanted to be set on a 24-hour clock.  This allows you to set the machine before you leave for work in the morning and have cooked rice ready when you come home.  That’s a nice touch, given the hour-long cooking times for perfect rice.!

Issue 4: Waiting….  The initial result was disconcerting, because unlike my previous pot experiences with bringing the rice to a noisy boil, the ZJ cooker was extremely quiet with no boiling noise and no steam.  Correction, there is a little S-shaped series of holes on the top of the unit, and once in a while some steam comes out.  But not very much, not right away and not all the time — and even when there is steam, the unit works almost silently.  Apparently, the right way to cook rice is not to have a constant level of heat, but rather to go through some more complex cycle that humans can’t replicate.

So I watched the time and at 19:10, I looked at the unit.  It wasn’t ready!  Instead, the display said 4 minutes, then 3,2,1.  Apparently, the fuzzy logic system is like World Cup soccer; where the referee adds an indeterminate amount of stoppage time; inthis case, to get the moisture content or some other parameter right.

Once that’s done, the unit chimes some music to tell you that it’s done, the display goes to 0h, and the Keep Warm button light goes on.  Apparently, it will keep the rice warm for hours and hours, which is a nice touch!

Zojirushi makes rice cooking idiot-proof!

So after all that, how was the white rice?  On my first try, I thought that it was a little moister than I like (due perhaps to differing American versus Japanese standards of rice perfection); so on my second try I reduced the water a bit and ever since the ZJ produced really perfect rice – and it brought the Asian restaurant experience home!    In addition, every single grain of rice was eatable.  No more sticking to the pot, since the ZJ insert bowl cleans very easily.

Having mastered white rice, I moved on to brown.  This was a revelation.  In the old days, when I would cook brown rice on a pot, the result was a bunch of relatively tough grains that we mostly ate out of a sense that brown rice is good for you.  With the ZJ, the long cooking time results in rice that is soft and moist (again, adjust the moisture and time to suit your taste).  It’s almost like eating a totally different food.

Net-net, while I would have preferred a US measuring cup and a more US-English friendly instruction manual, Zojirushi makes rice cooking idiot-proof!   Consequently, if my family is any indication, we’ll be eating rice more frequently – and those 20-pound warehouse club bags of basmati now make sense!

While pricey at a $270-$285 msrp,  any kitchen appliance that fundamentally changes how you cook and enjoy a basic food  is well worth the price!