In the design being described there is an outer water reservoir where the water is being boiled away specifically as a timer. An alternative would be to have a

In the design being described there is an outer water reservoir where the water is being boiled away specifically as a timer. An alternative would be to have a bimetallic strip detect when the rice pot comes to temperature, lower the temp, and start a mechanical timer that could be set by the user. The advantage would be a significant energy savings vs. boiling water away as a kind of crude timer.