TOKYO, Oct. 23 — Major rice cooker manufacturer Zojirushi Corp. and cooked rice processing machinery maker Suzumo Machinery Co. announced they will put on sale in April a professional-use rice cooker that can be used to make sushi rice.
The new rice cooker, jointly developed by the two firms, is the industry’s first device equipped with a function to cook sushi rice, according to the companies.
They are aiming to market the cooker to be used by restaurants serving Japanese cuisine, which are gaining increasing popularity among foreign tourists, as well as selling it abroad.
The product is an induction heating (IH) cooker with a capacity of steaming up to 1 sho — equivalent to roughly 1.5 kilograms — of rice. It comes with a function that allows users to cook sushi rice by simply adding sushi vinegar — a seasoning vinegar mixture specially designed for sushi making — and pressing a button.
The new rice cooker will let anyone create high-quality sushi rice without having to use a technique usually needed to properly mix sushi vinegar and rice together.
The sales price is expected to be around 70,000 yen excluding tax.
The firms say the potential users would be restaurants, as well as facilities like hotels and schools that serve chirashi zushi — a bowl of sushi rice topped with a variety of ingredients, often prepared for seasonal events.
They also plan to market the product overseas, packaged with a sushi rice ball making robot developed by Suzumo Machinery.
Suzumo Machinery President Toru Taniguchi said he believes the new rice cooker “can contribute not only to boosting (rice consumption) in Japan but also to expanding rice exports.”
A new rice cooker that can be used to cook sushi rice with a single button is shown in Tokyo’s Toshima Ward.