Yum Asia Rice Cooker Review

My Yum Asia rice cooker review: the one I use every day

I have used the Yum Asia Sakura 8-cup daily for over a year. It is the most-used appliance in my kitchen, and it makes good Thai jasmine rice and good sticky rice without me standing over it.

It is not a pressure cooker and it is not a multi-cooker with thirty programmes. It is a rice cooker that does rice well, and if that is what you want it is very good value. If you want one machine to replace your steamer, slow cooker and sauce pan, buy something else. I explain why further down.

What the fuzzy logic actually does

A basic rice cooker boils the rice, waits for a timer to finish, and switches off. If you have overfilled it or added cold water straight from the tap, you get a soft, uneven result and no second chances. The Yum Asia has a sensor in the pot and it measures the cooking as it goes, deciding when the water has been absorbed and the temperature has risen, instead of trusting a clock.

In practice it forgives me. I have forgotten to rinse the rice, tipped in cold tap water, doubled the quantity without cancelling the cycle. Rice still came out fine. That is the point of the feature, and it is why I would not go back to a basic cooker now.

It is not magic. If you use way more water than rice, or you cram the pot to the rim, you will get a poor result and so will any rice cooker. But within a normal range it is very hard to get it wrong.

The same panel handles brown rice, sushi and short-grain, so I use it for all of those, though jasmine is what it does best. All three smaller models have the same fuzzy logic, so the size is the only thing you are choosing between.

Which setting for jasmine rice, and how much water

There is no jasmine setting, and you do not need one. Use the long grain or white rice setting — jasmine is a long-grain rice, so that is the correct cycle.

My ratio is one cup of rice to one cup of water by volume, or one cup of rice to 1.2 cups if I am cooking for people who like it softer. Rinse it until the water runs mostly clear, about 20 seconds. That is the step people skip and then blame the cooker for. Pressing the button to opening the lid takes roughly 22 minutes, then it holds at warm for hours without drying out or needing a splash of water.

If you are used to the stovetop method and want the detail on ratios, resting time and troubleshooting, my guide to cooking jasmine rice covers it, and the same rice works either way.

Sticky rice (khao niao) in a Yum Asia rice cooker

Sticky rice is a different job, and it is the first thing people ask me about once they own one of these. I tested it on the Sakura 8-cup. It works, with one adjustment.

The default cycle is too loose for sticky rice. Khao niao needs to be steamed, not boiled, so that the grains cook through but stay separate and slightly firm. What I do is add a splash of water to the soaked rice, set it to the short-grain/white rice cycle, and press it once more for a second short steam pass. That gives you the soft, slightly chewy, translucent result you want without turning it into porridge.

If you have never cooked it, start with my how to cook sticky rice guide, then pick the grain with my best rice for sticky rice guide. The rice matters more here than in any other dish. A proper Thai fragrant rice such as Hom Mali or Khao Taeng Wa is what turns the result from merely sticky into something worth eating.

What else I cook in it

I am Thai, but I do not eat Thai food every day, and this gets used for most of what I cook. The slow-cook and stew functions handle soups and curries, plus the sort of stew you would otherwise start after work and forget about. The steam basket sits above the pot, so vegetables or fish go on top while the rice cooks underneath. No steamer hogging a hob burner.

The one I use most is the steam basket. Curry, rice and a side of vegetables from one machine, on one socket. The washing up is one pot and one basket. It also makes a cake, which I did not expect and have since made twice.

If you are buying this for Thai food specifically, the steam basket is the underrated part. I make green curry in the inner pot and the rice cooks at the same time.

Size, and which model you should buy

I went for the 8-cup mostly because we eat rice with almost every meal and there are four of us. It handles a full batch with room to spare, for two reasons: a full pot cooks more evenly than a part-full one, and I cook extra deliberately to freeze.

Most people overbuy. Unless you are feeding six or more, or you batch cook, a smaller model is better value and you will use it more often. Watch the units on the box. Capacity is given as raw rice, not cooked volume, which is where the confusion comes from: a 4.2L pot marked as 8 cups means 8 cups of dry rice, closer to 16 once cooked.

Model	Cooked capacity	Best for
Yum Asia Sakura 1.8L	~3 cups	One or two people, or a first cooker for a small kitchen. My pick if you cook for one.
Yum Asia Sakura 3.2L	~5 cups	Couples or a family of three. The sweet spot for most UK households.
Yum Asia Sakura 4.2L (8-cup)	~8 cups	Families of five or more, batch cooking, and sticky rice. This is the one I use.

Give sticky rice a size up. It expands more than plain rice while it steams, and packing the pot to the line is how you end up with a solid block instead of grains. If it is a dish you will cook often, step up one size instead of filling the smaller one.

Build and design

Stainless steel body, plastic control panel, LED display. It looks like it cost more than it did. It is also smaller than the capacity suggests, which matters if your worktop space is tight — the 8-cup is the tallest of the three.

The panel is straightforward once you have used it twice: rice type, then menu, then start. There is a delay function, so you can set it to be ready in the morning, and a keep warm setting you can adjust the hours on. The only thing that catches me out is that the buttons want a firm press, and one of them needs a two-second hold, which is not obvious until you read the manual.

Cleaning it afterwards

This is the part that decides whether I am still using an appliance a year later. I am. The inner pot is non-stick and a soft sponge lifts rice off it without a scourer. The steam vent detaches and rinses under the tap, and the basket and lid are dishwasher-safe.

One habit worth forming: wooden or silicone utensils, not metal. The coating is not delicate when new, but metal is what shortens its life, and the pot is the part you would have to replace.

Warranty and returns

It came with a warranty from Yum Asia, and when I have contacted them about a query I have had an answer within a couple of days. The company was straightforward about it, which is more than I can say for every appliance brand I own.

In practice, buying through Amazon matters more than the manufacturer warranty. You get 30 days to change your mind and send it back, which removes the only real risk in buying an appliance sight unseen. I bought mine on Amazon for that reason.

On energy use

A rice cooker is efficient because it cooks one thing in a sealed pot, and the Yum Asia is no exception. The cycle runs about 20 minutes and uses less energy than a hob would for the same rice. I cannot give you a measured watt-hour figure because I have not metered it, so I will not pretend to.

The honest version of the environmental argument is narrower than the marketing makes it. The saving is not really the electricity. It is not cooking more than you need. Rice cookers are wasteful when you cook one cup to save one cup, and the Yum Asia cannot stop you doing that.

How I tested it

Daily use over more than a year, not a week. I cooked it most days, in this order: jasmine rice, sticky rice, then whatever the slow-cook and steam functions were for. I compared the results against my own stovetop method in a normal saucepan, which is the harder comparison for the cooker to win, and it won often enough to stay on the counter.

I also tried to break it. Cold tap water instead of warm, no rinsing, an overfull pot, a part-full pot, and forgetting it switched to warm for six hours. Those are the mistakes people make in the first fortnight with any rice cooker, and it recovered from all of them. The one thing it will not forgive is filling the pot to the line, which is marked on the pot for a reason.

What I don’t like about it

No review is worth reading if everything is perfect, so here is what has annoyed me.

None of these are dealbreakers for me. They are the honest list. Together they explain why I would not recommend this cooker to someone who wants a programmable multi-cooker rather than a very good rice cooker. For that, buy one of the larger pressure-cooker models.

Where to take it from here

A rice cooker gets you the foundation, but the meal is what you do with it. If you want to use it for Thai food beyond plain rice, the steam function earns its keep: I cook Thai green curry in the inner pot with the sauce from scratch, and the same pot handles tom yum with no separate saucepan. To see whether you bought the right size, cook my prawn pad thai in it alongside the rice.

Use a proper Thai curry paste instead of a jar from the supermarket and you will notice. I use my homemade green curry paste; the red curry paste version works the same way. Not sure what to cook? The recipe finder picks something from what you already have.

Final verdict

I have stopped looking for a better rice cooker. After a year of daily use the fuzzy logic has not let me down once, the pot still cleans without a scourer, and I have never had to think about rice at five in the afternoon.

I would buy it for one reason, and only one: it is a very good rice cooker at a price that reflects that. If you want a single appliance to do everything, this is not it. Everything it does besides cook rice is the weakest part of the machine.

Pick your size, set it to long grain for jasmine, and cook.

Questions people actually ask about rice cookers