8 ms·

IIRC "cup" refers to the plastic cup (160ml) that comes with the instant pot. EDIT: 1 rice cup is 180ml- meaning it will produce 1 cup of rice when done. http

• OJFord 3y ago
  I'm not even American (i.e. I don't ordinarily use anything else called a 'cup' (unless playing cricket)) but that seems unreasonably dumb. Of course that will cause confusion? That's surely fraudulent in it's deception or reckless unawareness of its deception? 'Cup' is a crazy unit for a number of reasons, one of them is that there's an Imperial cup, a US cup (customary), and a US cup (legal), and a metric cup, and that they're all different. But an entirely new one on me is that there's an 'Instant Pot cup' that's only roughly ⅔ the size of any of them! By comparison the other difffernces are intellectually annoying but completely inconsequential!
  • temp12192021 3y ago
    It's a "standard" amount for rice cookers- https://www.thespruceeats.com/measuring-rice-for-rice-cookers-1907466 https://www.thespruceeats.com/measuring-rice-for-rice-cooker... 1 rice cup produces 1 cup of rice when cooked
    • OJFord 3y ago
      That says 180ml, so similar but different again? Still dumb either way. Don't call it 'cup', if you must use cups just use ⅔cup? It's like if I invent an 'air fryer' as though that's something new, and then talk about an '18" oven tray' which is actually 6" wide, but in my air fryer line that's the measurement of what we call '18" oven tray'. Who's winning what? How is this good for anyone?
      • ndiddy 3y ago
        It’s fairly standard for cooking appliances. What your coffee maker refers to as a “cup” is also not a cup.
        • OJFord 3y ago
          What's a 'coffee maker'? My espresso machine's portafilter basket takes as much coffee as I put in it. So does a cafetière. A Nespresso/other pod based machine is a fixed amount which as far as I'm aware is always specified in ml if at all.
          • rdlw 3y ago
            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffeemaker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffeemaker
            • OJFord 3y ago
              Ok, the first picture there is of a Turkish stove-top style device which (and the vague description of any coffee-making device too) as I said takes as much as you put in, where do cups come in to it? If you use cups to measure coffee, fine (I don't measure, but I think grams would be more normal) - or if your specific 'coffee maker' came with a cup, fine, but don't over-generalise? I mean not even over-generalise - GP told me my 'coffee maker' came with a non-standard cup; I promise you it came with no cups whatsoever. (It's a Rancilio Silvia, the stock basket has a max capacity of probably 18? 21? grams - definitely less than any 'cup', about a tablespoon. But that's a physical maximum and nobody called it a cup or suggested it was for measurement.)
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              • rdlw 3y ago
                Maybe it's different on mobile but I see a moka pot as the first image. I have a 6-cup model, which has a 12 oz. capacity. The point is that no one really uses those as measurements, they're not useful. But almost every coffee maker comes labeled with cups anyway for some reason, probably marketing for comparison shoppers. Obviously you're right that espresso machines don't have cup markings (however that would even work), but I have to say this is the first time I've seen someone call an espresso machine a coffee maker (hence my uh... curt previous response, sorry about that).
      • throw0101b 3y ago
        > That says 180ml, so similar but different again? Please note the adjectives: > While a standard U.S. cup measure is 240 milliliters, a rice cup according to rice industry standards is much smaller at 180 milliliters.
    • donw 3y ago
      It's called a "Go" (合) in Japanese, and is equivalent to 3/4 cup (180mL).
      • carlmr 3y ago
        Interesting. In Chinese 合 (hé) can mean whole, but also pronounced gê (I don't have e with 3rd tone character) it can mean a measure of grain or 100ml. 公合(gōnggê) can be used to be specific here.
    • Reason077 3y ago
      > ”1 rice cup produces 1 cup of rice when cooked” Will vary depending on the type of rice, but in general, rice expands much more than that when cooked. Somewhere around 2-3X the uncooked volume.
    • unmole 3y ago
      Maybe standard in Japan. Rice cookers in India come with 160ml cups.
      • pritambaral 3y ago
        The standard Indian measurement of rice is done by the mutthi (handful) and nazar (eyeballed). That's what I've seen moms and aunts and even career cooks do. This is also the crowd that rarely agrees with cooking their rice in a rice cooker. Not surprising, since they rarely agree with each other on how best to cook which rice. I still enjoy the reactions (of surprise, disappointment, and sometimes mild derision) when I tell people I prefer to cook my rice in a microwave. Nevertheless, the idea of a standard fixed-volume measure of rice, by the volume it occupies after cooking, seems a poor concept to me, because the factor by which rice grows when cooked varies by breed/variety, level of processing, even soak time. That's why, I was told, the mutthi and nazar system is better.
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  • AndrewDavis 3y ago
    Cups make sense with historical context. It didn't matter what size your cup was, because they were just a way to express ratios.
    • OJFord 3y ago
      Sure, and that's true of feet and others too (all sorts of different regional feet) - but we standardised and that changed long ago, and nobody uses them like that any more (you'll get some non-cup measurement alongside them that breaks the ratio usage). Cups persist, but without much standardisation - you generally have to measure if you care to know which 'cup' size you bought. It won't often matter that much, but as I said it's intellectually annoying isn't it? Being British I don't encounter them much, just American recipes, but I generally just mentally convert as ¼l (i.e. as though a metric cup, if anyone used that) if I'm following one.
      • sublinear 3y ago
        > Cups persist, but without much standardisation This is not true. There is the US cup, which is 1/16th of a gallon, and then there's the general notion of a "cup" which is the crap that comes with a rice cooker or whatever.
        • Lio 3y ago
          1/16th of what gallon? There's more than one. e.g. US gallon != Imperial gallon. The problem with stuff like cups, gallons, feet, etc. is that they don't travel. They might kind of work in the US (and long as you're not using an appliance) but they don't work consistently anywhere else.
          • sublinear 3y ago
            > they don't work consistently anywhere else Which is why they're not used anywhere else. Problem solved.
            • 3y ago
  • Reason077 3y ago
    The ~180ml rice cups have been around for at least as long as rice cookers have existed. It makes sense because 1 rice cup is the right amount of uncooked rice to make a decent serving for 1 person. A metric cup is too much!
    • redcap 3y ago
      I don't know how much rice you eat, but my experience has been that 1 rice cup cooks enough rice for a modest serving for 2 adults - in our household at least.
      • chipsa 3y ago
        The general idea is that a cup of rice is the main portion of the meal, and the rest of the meal is add ons (mostly veggies with a bit of meat). If the rice is just a side to the entree, then yeah, you're going to be eating less of it.
        • innocenat 3y ago
          That's the idea but as someone who have been in Asia all my life rarely do people eat the entire cup per meal. 0.5-0.7 cup per person is more common this days for standard meal.
  • kube-system 3y ago
    It causes a TON of confusion! ...which is either a lot of confusion, 1000kg of confusion, 2000lb of confusion, 2240lb of confusion, 2400lb of confusion, 1 giga calorie of confusion, 7 giga calories of confusion, 10 giga calories of confusion, 12,000 btu/h of confusion, or 100, 10000, or 100000 unitless amounts of confusion.
    • Jedd 3y ago
      I do get your point, but for the record it should never be 1000kg. In metric we use the word tonne to disambiguate from the myriad weird, whacky, and deprecated tons used by ~ 5% of the population.
      • Semaphor 3y ago
        In German, it’s all "Tonne" ;)
      • CydeWeys 3y ago
        In the US we don't really use the word tonne. We might say metric ton though. Use that a bunch in the same context and it just gets shortened to ton. Admittedly megagram is a better word, as it's not overloaded.
        • Jedd 3y ago
          > In the US we don't really use the word tonne. Yes, that was pretty much the crux of my point. If you did use that spelling, you wouldn't have to disambiguate, and it'd align with popular English-speaking nations that already use metric. It's a bit like not using the word 'metre' - despite the USA recalcitrantly eschewing the actual measurement - and confusingly re-purposing 'meter' (a device for measuring something). I mean, sure, they sound the same (refer sibling comment and response) but context can inform in spoken English. In written English it's dreadfully convenient to have unique strings for unique concepts (or words).
          • CydeWeys 3y ago
  • michaelmior 3y ago
    Having grown up in Canada and now living in the US for several years, I'm just now learning about the "metric cup." I've just been assuming all this time that the cups here are 250 mL!
  • resolutebat 3y ago
    It's inherited from Japan, where 180ml is one gō, the standard measure for a portion of rice. Even more confusingly, this originates from a Chinese unit which was standardized differently in modern China. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ge_(unit) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ge_(unit)
    • Modified3019 3y ago
      Interesting. I wish they had just labelled it as a "gō" then, alongside the mL equivalent, and told us about why/the history in a blurb on the box/manual and then it'd have own neat little cultural thing going on.
      • mdhen 3y ago
        Rice cookers are all the same, they come with plastic measuring cups that are that size. I just call them rice cups.
• hinoki 3y ago
  I think cup is a translation of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ge_(unit) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ge_(unit) Which like cup has different definitions depending on where you are.
• dtgriscom 3y ago
  No, that's backwards. It takes about 12 cups of water to fill the inner pot to the "9 cup" line. In other words, 1 cup as measured by the lines is actually 1 1/3 cups (or about 315ml). So, measuring with the lines gives you more than you want, not less (as you would with a rice measuring "cup"). And, the manual doesn't mention anything about the scale (although it does mention the "MAX" line at the top of the pot).
  • noworld 3y ago
    Here's another guess - my rice cooker has line for cups that are for filling with water after you add rice. So, in your case, you put in 9 cups of rice, then add water until it is at the 9 cup line, then that's the right amount of water. The water fills the space between the rice and then fills up to the line.