No it's not a pressure cooker. You can open it mid-cycle and there's not pressure or any sort blasting out. Asian-style rice cookers vary incredibly in quality,

No it's not a pressure cooker. You can open it mid-cycle and there's not pressure or any sort blasting out. Asian-style rice cookers vary incredibly in quality, but if you get one made by a decent manufacturer (we like Zojirushi), you don't even need to get one with lots of features -- just a "cook/warm" button. I believe they use a thermostat to "time" the cooking. When you heat water it will stabilize at its boiling point (100C) and when enough of the water boils off the temperature will start to increase. When this happens the cooker will turn off. When I cook ribs or chicken or whatever in the cooker, I'll put in some beer or other liquids as a marinade and that works like water does when cooking rice. Only the cooker will naturally run much longer.