Compared to pasta, or a nice jacket potato, rice can be a bit of a mystery to cook. Those in the know probably use the “absorption method”, hoping that they time the cooking just right so that there’s not a horrible burnt-on sticky mess at the bottom of the pan and crunchy grains of rice at the top.

Unsurprisingly, the Japanese love affair with both technology and rice has come to the rescue, as a highly detailed article at Tech-On! proves.

Believe me, there’s not much you won’t know about cooking perfect, Japanese-style (slightly sweet and sticky) rice once you’ve read it — or indeed, how Zojirushi has perfected a machine to do it automatically.