The only thing more no-frills is cooking rice in a pot on the stove, as I did for forever. It came out fine! Why change? Our kitchen has limited storage, and I didn’t want to give over a single valuable inch to a bulky single-use gadget.

I should have known I was wrong. One large piece of evidence: the entire continent of Asia, and every family in diaspora world-round. One small: When I graduated from college, a beloved relative gifted me a rice cooker, this very model or its precursor. I left it with my parents when I went out of the country for work, and they loved it so much they just … kept it. It’s been a couple of years since, and my graduation gift is still chuffing along, making pots of perfect rice in their kitchen. In the meantime, microwaves, mixers, dishwashers, stovetops, and refrigerators have all gone kaput and been replaced. This thing is old reliable.

Now I have new reliable. Again, my rice cooker was a gift, this time from my husband. It cost about $50. There are rice cookers in this world that cost 15 times that. They precisely, intimately get to know each grain and adjust water, temperature, and cooking time for maximum coddling. They are computerized, cooking via induction or pressure, not the basic electric heating element mine uses. You can steam vegetables and make cakes in them. They have fancy brains that use a technology called “fuzzy logic” — as if I need a rice cooker for that! They give facials, program your music playlist, double as home security systems, send out your emails and maintain your schedule, and compose original scores then perform them when your rice is ready.

I just want my rice cooker to cook rice. Not very much rice. Just enough.

Enough for three people for dinner, maybe with some left over for lunch the following day. The heavy little pot I once used on the stove did all this, but sometimes the rice was a little dry and sometimes the rice was a little mushy and sometimes the pot bubbled over and viscous rice fluids caked on the burner to create a strange, see-through, crinkly substance that was no fun to scrub off.

The best way to eat rice may be the simplest: with butter and soy sauce.

Now my rice is perfect all the time. I scoop out grains from the bag with the cup that came with the rice cooker — it measures 1 gō, a Japanese measurement equal to about ¾ of a US cup. I rinse the rice, rubbing it against the bottom of the strainer until the water approaches clarity. I add the grains to the metal insert, fill it with water up to the appropriate line, put on the lid, and push down the switch. “COOKING.” Then I go do other stuff: chop onions, file taxes, play with the dog, stare at a blank screen I can never put any words on until I’ve written the very first sentence in my head.

Life brings plenty to fuss over and worry about. Those onions could be chopped a little finer. That tax return could be triple-checked. The dog, well, the dog is perfect, no notes. Those words, will I ever get them right? They are so high-touch. Each one must be handled, passed through the winding corridors of my emotional weather, before it is meted out. Each one requires the kind of care bestowed by a top-of-the-line rice cooker that strokes the individual grains, bathes them in waters of the ideal temperature, and gestates them for a duration calibrated to an infinitesimal degree. I am not a machine, alas, alas.

So let this one thing be simple.

I love my rice cooker because I set it and forget it. “Set it and forget it” are beautiful words in the English language. How often do we get to put them into practice? In the era B.R.C. (Before Rice Cooker), I made rice pretty regularly. Now I want to make it daily. And apparently I have been, because the other night my son looked up from his dinner and politely asked if maybe we could not have rice again for a little while.

Sorry, kid. Rice is perfect.

It is still economical, although you might want to buy a big bag now. It is shelf-stable when stored properly, perfect for your end-times pantry prepping. Apparently, we are all going to be eating a lot more of it with beans in the coming decades. This might be the one thing about this moment I’m OK with: Rice and beans is one of my favorite meals.

I love fried rice for lunch. But the other day for breakfast, I crisped some leftover grains in a frying pan and ate them topped with an omelet. So good for breakfast, too.

The best way to eat rice might be the simplest. In the novel “Butter,” by Asako Yuzuki (translated from Japanese by Polly Barton), a journalist covers the case of an accused serial killer obsessed with food. Early in their relationship, the accused tells the food-ignorant reporter to try making rice topped with butter and soy sauce.

“The butter should still be cold,” she instructs. “It will begin to melt almost immediately with the heat of the rice, but I want you to eat it before it melts fully. Cool butter and warm rice. First of all, savour the difference in their temperatures. Then, the two will melt alongside one another, mingle together, and form a golden fountain, right there inside your mouth. Even without seeing it, you just know that it’s golden — that’s the way it tastes.” I have never wanted to eat something so badly in my life.

The journalist purchases a rice cooker, rice, and expensive French butter. She prepares the dish, adding a drop of soy sauce on top. She tries it, and everything begins to change — her relationship with taste, food, work, womanhood. She immediately wants more.

“She would cook another gō of rice — no, make it two. Was that too much?”

Never.

Devra First can be reached at devra.first@globe.com. Follow her on Instagram @devrafirst.