Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

We bought this rice cooker from a store whose name rhymes with "Halmart". Thinking that we knew how to cook rice, we loaded it up and fired away, only to get a tremendous mess of starchy goop that flooded the top of the unit and flowed down the side, collecting underneath. (It stinks and the stink gets worse if you forget that it's there...) [UPDATE: You can place the rice cooker on a large Corelle dish to catch goopy overflow. It's a close size-match.) After reading reviews for other Aroma rice cookers here on Amazon, I discovered that soaking the rice fixes everything. And very fortunately, this unit comes with a delay timer. Just load the cooker with rice and water (measured, of course), press "Delay Timer" for the number of hours you'd like to delay (the number is the number of hours when the rice will be finished), and choose "white rice" or "brown rice" (brown rice was giving us the most mess). I've set the timer as little as 2 hours, and the mess is eliminated even then. I believe that more delay is better. I've set it as long as 12 hours. I don't know the maximum number of hours you can delay. CONS for this rice cooker: there's a plastic valve inside the lid that needs to be cleaned often, and the underside of the lid needs to be cleaned as well. It doesn't detach, so you'll have to scrub with a wet paper towel. I haven't tried to steam anything yet (fish, veggies). Bottom line: I recommend this product.