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I have bought a (roughly five litre volume) electric rice cooker that looks like this:

Notice the small hole at the top lid, that I suppose is for letting out steam.

During cooking, is it ever needed to put a dry cloth to cover the hole? And, if I do put a dry cloth while it's in cooking mode (or warming mode), are there any risks? (for example, my food will be burnt)

I am mostly using this electric rice cooker to cook rice, oats, boiled vegetable, pulses, etc. The idea to put a dry cloth covering the hole comes from my mom who has been using old pressure cookers for years (like this one).

Anonymous1234
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    Do you mean while cooking or just after turning it off for taking advantage of residual heat? The former is a clear safety hazard, the former might have a benefit. – Quora Feans Sep 29 '22 at 17:47
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    Pretend I'm 5 years old and explain to me the how putting a dry cloth on top of a hot appliance is a good idea. – MonkeyZeus Sep 30 '22 at 12:35

2 Answers2

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Very simple: don't cover it at all, ever.

There is a reason for the hole being there. It is there to let stuff out! Usually clean steam, but if you loaded the cooker wrong, a bit of mess can come out. Then you should be happy that 1) it is coming out and not interfering with the cooking process inside, and 2) drawing your attention to the fact that you have loaded it wrong, so you know better next time. Just clean the mess.

In a pressure cooker, it is doubly important to not cover it! It is there as a safety mechanism, to prevent an explosion. Yes, I mean a real explosion, which will damage not just the pressure cooker, but also a good part of your kitchen! While pressure cookers made for home use are very safe, this depends on them being used as intended, and especially on not obstructing their safety valve in any way.

If you want a cleaner kitchen, simply position the rice cooker in a place where its steam hits something wipable, like a tiled wall. You can also put some kind of easy-washable foil on the underside of your upper cabinets above the cooker, or attach some multi-layer paper (an old magazine will do) which you then exchange regularly. But you have to live with the fact that you will have steam (with slightly dirty aerosol) coming out of that hole, that's what it is for.

rumtscho
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    I've seen advice to cover the steam hole of a saucepan lid (not a pressure cooker) but it's always been about keeping more of the moisture inside the pan, not about protecting anything from getting the steam on it. That last paragraph felt very out-of-the-blue to me, a response to something no-one had said. But of course you are correct about pressure cookers and their safety mechanisms. – dbmag9 Sep 29 '22 at 10:06
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    @dbmag9 I've heard this somewhere before, with the "keeps it clean" reasoning, that's why I directly assumed that it's also the OP's mother's reasoning. Maybe I was overeager there. With a superficial search, I found an article that also discusses this advice specifically for pressure cookers. It seems to implicitly assume that it is also about dealing with the steam coming out, but it doesn't explicitly say that it is about the mess it can make, so maybe it is not universal. https://www.hippressurecooking.com/cover-pressure-cooker-vent-valve/. – rumtscho Sep 29 '22 at 11:30
  • Thanks for your detailed answer. You are right about the cleanliness aspect. We have white walls that tend to get dark quickly due to so much steam. How do you suggest we preserve moisture inside the rice cooker? Cooking in it takes a long time which can suck up a lot of the moisture. So do I fill it with enough water in the beginning and then leave it on "warming" setting? – Anonymous1234 Sep 29 '22 at 12:29
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    @Anonymous1234 The rice cooker is designed to operate without an extra cover; if you follow the directed quantity of rice and water it should produce good rice, and switch to the warming setting when it detects that the rice is ready. – dbmag9 Sep 29 '22 at 12:46
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    @dbmag9: With analog rice cookers, the rice is not ready until 10-15 minutes **after** it switches to the warm setting. Digital rice cookers trigger a timer at that stage. – Brian Sep 29 '22 at 16:47
  • @Brian Thanks for the correction; I've never used one myself. – dbmag9 Sep 29 '22 at 16:51
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    @Anonymous1234 That’s just how rice cooks, and how rice cookers work. If you have issues with the excess steam, my suggestion would be to invest in better ventilation in the kitchen, not try to keep the rice cooker from producing steam. I know some people for example who put their rice cooker on their stove top (with the stove off of course) when using it so they can take better advantage of the exhaust fan above the stove. – Austin Hemmelgarn Sep 29 '22 at 17:10
  • @AustinHemmelgarn I'm a bit surprised: I don't think our rice cooker lets out a lot of steam. There's some steam escaping before the pressure is high enough to *close* the valve in the beginning; wiggling it a bit can trigger it to "set" a bit earlier, minimizing escaping steam. Wouldn't it be the sign of mistake if the safety valve triggered during cooking? Then, when it's done, you need to release the pressure before opening, which is when most steam escapes. Waiting somewhat before opening reduces that amount. – Peter - Reinstate Monica Sep 30 '22 at 05:54
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    @Peter-ReinstateMonica It seems that you are describing a modern electronic pressure cooker with rice-cooking functions. Classic analog pressure cookers have different valves, and the one which has the weight continually issues steam during the cooking process, that's how it controls the exact pressure. A non-pressurized rice coker also has to continuously issue steam, else it would build up pressure. – rumtscho Sep 30 '22 at 12:34
  • @rumtscho Ah, true! Ours has an additional valve and is electronic. – Peter - Reinstate Monica Sep 30 '22 at 12:56
  • @Anonymous1234: I don't think a cloth could cause a safety issue. Even if wet, it won't contain pressure. At most it will get blown off if a pressure cooker's safety valve pops and releases a lot of steam at once. Inspired by [fyrepenguin's comment](https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/121826/when-to-put-a-dry-cloth-over-an-electric-rice-cooker#comment199137_121838) on an answer about sputtering, I suspect a cloth might help catch starchy water that might get forced out (like when a pot of pasta boils over), and keep more of it in the cloth than on the walls. If your cooker sputters – Peter Cordes Sep 30 '22 at 21:01
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    @PeterCordes for pressure cookers specifically, the manufacturers state that any kind of coverage is a safety risk and should not be used. See for example the article I linked above, which cites many manufacturers at once. https://www.hippressurecooking.com/cover-pressure-cooker-vent-valve/ And again, for a rice cooker, it was designed to work with a free vent that sputters. It might not be a safety risk there, but it is still best to let it work as intended, and wipe off any starchy water. – rumtscho Oct 01 '22 at 11:57
  • @rumtscho: I guess even the light weight of a cloth could in theory interfere with a relief valve popping open, if it made something bind. Or maybe their legal team really wanted to make a blanket statement, not leaving anything to a judgement call. Since we can't know for sure, agreed that it's probably best to err on the side of caution. Even a tiny risk of metal shrapnel from a pressure cooker is not worth it. – Peter Cordes Oct 01 '22 at 20:20
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Answer from personal experience an conjecture:

The idea to put a dry cloth covering the hole comes from my mom who has been using old pressure cookers

The problem with pressure cookers is that these, in my experience, do not start by emitting "clean" steam, but they start to "sputter" in the warm-up phase, before the valve/mechanisms fully locks.

On an electric (not gas!) stove top, laying a dry cotton cloth loosely on the valve during this phase, is no risk at all IMHO, and may prevent some mess on the stove.

Since I'm sure a rice cooker won't sputter, since no pressure is built, I'd also say: Do not cover.

Martin
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    I *have* had a rice cooker sputter in the past, though my current one doesn’t at all. And yes, the sputtering one was a bog-standard unpressurized analog rice cooker. One thing I think helps these days *could* be the fact that I wash my rice while growing up we didn’t, so the reduced starches means that less bubbles form and get spat out at the hole – fyrepenguin Sep 30 '22 at 20:46