Cooking Sushi Rice in a Rice Cooker

After scouring the Internet, we found a random post / complaint from someone that had attempted to cook sushi rice at home in a rice cooker. This is what was posted:

I just bought a Cuisinart 8-cup rice cooker and tried to cook sushi rice in it for the first time. It was a disaster! Waaay to sticky & mushy. I cooked Japanese sweet rice and used the ratio recommended on the package (not for rice cookers) which was 1 1/c cups of rice to 3 cups of water. My instruction booklet did not give a ratio for this type of rice but it has another one for “sushi rice” which is 3 cups of rice, using the rice cooker measuring cup, and 2 1/4 cups of water plus 2 tablespoons of sake. Perhaps I should have used that? When I added 3 cups of water to the rice in the cooker, it came to the “2″ line. What did I do wrong??? I have made nearly perfect sushi rice on the stove before but wanted the cooker for convenience. Help!!

 

We wanted to post about this because we have talked about cooking your own sushi at home before. It's fun and exciting and if you're going to put forth the effort to try it, we want you to do it properly so that your meal takes how you want it.

 

 

So our response is below. This is how it is done.

 

You cook the rice using equal parts rice and water. Before cooking the rice, rinse the rice until the water runs almost clear. Next, cook your rice in the rice cooker until it's done and open the rice cooker to let the rice dry out a little bit. In a small pot, mix 1/2 cup rice wine vinegar with 1/4 cup sugar and a pinch of salt, and heat until the sugar is dissolved. Put the rice into a separate bowl and add vinegar mixture to rice until you have reached the stickiness level desired. Try not to mix the rice too much to prevent mushy rice. Finally, enjoy your perfectly seasoned sticky sushi rice.

No one said making sushi was easy. Haha.