The invention discloses a gruel cooking degree determining method and device. The method includes: in the process when an electric cooker cooks gruel, adopting a light emitting device to emit light with preset luminous intensity according to a preset time period; adopting a light receiving device to collect the light emitted by the light emitting device, and recognizing luminous intensity of the light collected by the light receiving device; acquiring a gelatinization value according to the recognized luminous intensity of the light, wherein the gelatinization value is used for reflecting cooking degree of the gruel in the electric cooker, and different luminous intensities of the light correspond to different gelatinization values; determining the cooking degree of the gruel in the electric cooker according to the acquired gelatinization value. Through the gruel cooking degree determining method and device, the problem of low accuracy in judging the cooking degree of the gruel in theelectric cooker in the related art is solved.