Newspaper-Powered Rice Cooker Proves Invaluable during Earthquake



An ingenious rice cooker designed to be used with rolled newspaper instead of gas or electricity has proven surprisingly useful during the recent earthquake that hit Japan. The Tiger Kamado used to be ridiculed by people who simply didn’t believe in the premise that you could cook soft, fluffy rice with only a few newspaper pages as a power source. However, the Japanese don’t mess around when it comes to rice, and the earthquake that rocked the Asian country on January 1 proved just how efficient and effective the ingenious Tiger Kamado could be. One man from the Noto Peninsula recently took to social media to praise the rice cooker that his family had scolded him for buying last summer, claiming that it had provided them all with hot meals when there was no gas or electricity. He indicated that he could cook several cups of perfectly cooked rice with just a few pages of a newspaper. The Tiger Kamado consists of a metallic pot for the rice and a burning compartment with two large holes under the pot. The pot can hold between 1 and 5 cups of rice and requires a specific number of newspaper pages, depending on the quantity of rice being cooked. For example, to cook 3 cups of rice, you need 9 newspaper pages. You can purchase a Tiger Kamado for ¥19,800 ($135) on the Tiger online store.