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I live in a small cabin, with a galley kitchen. Space is at a premium, which means that most kitchen gadgets and appliances quickly lose the Darwinian struggle for counter space. But one of the most crucial appliances in my kitchen arsenal is the rice cooker. So much so that when my old rice cooker died last weekend, I bought a new one the very next day.

My whole entire life, I have never been able to cook rice. That's my confession. I have had a lot of cooking experience and successes over the years, but I have never mastered the supposedly simple art of making rice on the stovetop. Sometimes it turned out burnt. More often it turns out crunchy and hard, regardless of how much water I add or how long I let it simmer. I have tried, oh how I tried, and I finally gave up.

You also have to factor in my ability to get distracted. A pot of rice on the stove is virtually guaranteed to get ignored for too long and end up burnt.

The rice cooker solves all of these problems. It cooks every kind of rice, and it does it perfectly. And best of all, when it's done cooking, it switches over to "warming" mode. This means that if you can't get to it right away, no problem. The rice cooker will hold your rice, ready and waiting, until you show up to accept it.

I don't know what strange magic it uses to decide when the rice is ready. It works as well for brown rice (which I make frequently) as it does wild rice, rice mixtures, and the many varieties of white rice I've tried. Given the amazing health benefits to be found in brown rice (which is a whole grain; buzzword of the day), this little gadget is a real lifesaver.

Image courtesy Flickr/Cedric Sam