Inomata Plastic Japanese Rice Washing Bowl with Side and Bottom Drainers

Extremely versatile. I've used this for five years to rinse my rice and beans. Well made and very capable of handling any grain or bean. Light weight. Very functional. Easy to use, clean and store. After five years of use; no signs of wear or degradation. if you cook a fair amount of rice or beans this is a tool that will help you accomplish your tasks.

Draining off water from rice inherently loses some of the rice when pouring off the water. This washing bowl had a side strainer as well which works for draining veggies like mushrooms, or broccoli. This is made for a larger grain rice so you can pour the water off quickly. The smaller grains should go through the bottom OK, but you do have to hand agitate to keep the water flowing at times. This is both good and bad, it takes a bit more time, but it won't lose even the smallest size grains. I don't see a lot of them getting stuck in the holes either. Very inexpensive for what it is, you probably can't go wrong.There are two reasons for rinsing rice, the normal one is to wash off the excess starch and prevent the rice from clumping together after cooking, the second is to rinse off magnesium silicate a sort of fine grinding powder used to polish the rice. Brown rice for instance, is really an intermediate between removing the inedible husk leaving the bran and germ in the brown, to removing them to make white rice. Brown rice is better for you in a lot of ways, but takes longer to cook and should be presoaked. It tastes OK, but not as good as white, there is definitely a chewing difference that tells you you are eating more fiber. Not too many Chinese takeout places have it as an alternative, but one place in Grand Haven, MI did and I switched to not take up so much refined carbs in my diet. Again you have to wash it as well.If you're conserving water, or this uses up your facet filter too fast I put a large pot underneath and dunked in there a few times while hand agitating the rice. I removed the pot and ran the water direct for the final rinse, this works well if near the final rinse you want to soak for a few minutes (especially if the rice is brown). FYI, a cooks secret I've seen online a number of times if doing short grain sushi rice is to put the post washed rice in the rice cooker and add a drop of sushi vinegar, and a half sheet of nori, (toasted seaweed) before closing the lid. This helps get the right cook and texture on the rice, but it does pretty good with a proper rinsing as well.Recommended, you can't buy a better one for more, there may be automated solutions that restaurants use, but if so they'd be a lot more expensive, for price and function this cannot be beat.

Very nice rice strainer. It is deep enough so that you can use it for other things like washing fruit. Has drain holes both on the bottom and on the side. Sturdy yet light material.

I picked up the Inomata Japanese Rice Washing Bowl and it’s been pretty useful. The side and bottom drainers make rinsing rice a lot easier, I can swish the rice and let the water run out without losing grains. The size is decent: big enough for a few cups of rice but not so big that it’s annoying to store. Also, it’s made with food-grade plastic and cleans up easily.One thing to note: because of the drain holes and shape, you have to tilt it just right to get all the water out. If you don’t, there’ll be some puddling at the bottom. Still, overall I think it’s worth it especially if you wash rice often.

I bought this washing bowl 8 years ago. Use it regularly. Like it. Recommend it.This year I decided to try to make California rolls and to do that you're supposed to have a hangiri. I used this bowl instead and it worked fine. Purists will balk at what I did, but a hangiri costs $40 (twice that for a decent one), and I didn't want to sacrifice precious shelf space for something I may not use often (or ever again). I recommend putting a plate under the bowl to catch the rice vinegar that sieves through, and reuse it, although not much vinegar made it to the counter anyway. This old dog has a new trick.

This Japanese rice colander is perfect for washing rice (as well as vegetables/fruits, pasta, etc). Even though it is food-grade plastic, I don't recommend using it to drain boiling water. It's easy to store, lightweight, and well-made. The size of the bowl is also perfect. You can wash up to 6 cups of rice with no issues.I grew up washing rice using the rice pot, but I usually lose a bit of rice every time I pour the water out. I also never get ALL of the water out of the rice when rinsing because I don't want to lose too much rice. However, now, with this Japanese rice colander, I can easily rinse my rice and wash it at the same time. There are two sizes of holes in the colander: the bottom holes are extra small and the upper holes on the draining side are a bit larger. The design of smaller holes on the bottom of the colander is specifically created so that when you run the water into it, some water collects in the bowl with the rice so you can simultaneously wash your rice while the rest of the water drains out through the bottom continuously. The colander also is lifted on the bottom so that the water doesn't flow back into the colander. Before this colander, I had to run water into the rice bowl, wash the rice, pour the rice water out and hope I didn't lose much rice, and then repeat the same process several times.