Japanese Rice Washing Bowl - Plastic Colander with Side & Bottom Drain Holes for Perfectly Rinsed Rice - Ideal for Sushi, Rice Cooking & Asian Cuisine Prep

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.