Last year, Nigella Lawson's 'list of Christmas presents for the food focussed' gave me so much inspiration for shopping ahead of the festive period. Now, my favourite recommendation from that series, Nigella's Judge Small Electric Rice Cooker, is reduced just in time for payday, dropping from £34.99 to £23.60 via Amazon.
A rice cooker may seem like a strange choice for a Christmas gift, but as Nigella says via her Instagram post, this is a 'supremely useful and reward-yielding' buy that your recipient will actually use all year round. After I gifted one to my sister last Christmas, it easily became her most used appliance in the kitchen.
As Ideal Home's Kitchen Appliances Editor, I find myself recommending cooking gadgets all the time (even when I'm not on the clock!) but a lot of them prove too fussy or too expensive to be adopted by my family friends.
The humble rice cooker, however, is the exception. Even those in my family who shun air fryers and fancy coffee machines have climbed onboard the rice cooker train, mainly because they're so easy to use. My rice cooker of choice is the Lakeland Digital Rice Cooker (£44.99 at Lakeland) which takes just two buttons to operate and yields perfectly fluffy rice every time.
Nigella's choice of rice cooker is much smaller than mine, with a 300ml capacity, but this compact size makes it much more gift-able. As Nigella says in her post, it's an ideal pick for 'someone who lives alone or in a couple' as well as students or those getting into cooking for the first time.
This particular Judge cooker certainly proved a hit on Nigella's Instagram last year, with many commenters remarking that they took up the chef and cookbook writer's recommendation both for themselves and for their nearest and dearest.
My usual rice cooker.
I'm an avid Nigella fan – so much so that I asked for her most loved cookbooks, including How to be a Domestic Goddess (available at Amazon), for my birthday this year – so I'm really hoping she revives her gift series again on Instagram this year. If you're feeling inspired to pick up a rice cooker for a perfectly practical present, here are some of our other favourites here at Ideal Home.
This is more of a do-it-all cooker and therefore perfect for those who are always in the kitchen dreaming up new recipes. I'm testing it at the moment and love the texture of the rice it turns out as well as the fact you can slow cook and steam in it.
If you want something even lower in faff, this clever microwave cooker is perfect for turning out grains for midweek meals in a hurry. Plus, you won't have to clear a space on your worktop for it!
I recently tested this Ninja slow cooker with a rice mode and it changed my dinnertimes for the better. As well as easy settings for cooking rice it is so kitted out for oven to table melas too. Read my review for the full details.
Could you get onboard with this slightly eccentric gift idea?
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