Heritage Black Rice

A more traditional kind of rice

Malcome Larcens Nov 24, 2015 - 2 min read

<p>This rice field art is made by planting different types of rice to make this great picture</p>

<p>The rice plants after a few weeks</p>

<p>A few more weeks, we can notice how the plants have brown tips</p>

<p>After about 2 months the rice kernels start to appear</p>

<p>The rice kernels are getting bigger</p>

<p>Now the plants are turning yellow</p>

<p>Unlike regular rice the black rice husks turn brown</p>

<p>Fully ripened, just a few days before harvest  </p>

<p>After cooking, this rice is more glutinous and sweeter than regular Japanese rice</p>

<p>A rice bar, most people are mixing it with regular rice as shown on the package, I like to make desserts with it since it's sweeter</p>

Rice is an integral part of Japanese and many Asian cultures, in fact, in Japan the word for rice and meals are synonymous with some variation on the time of day.

The majority of farmers grow short grain rice that has been engineered over the years to give good yield and please Japanese palates, they have quite specific tastes when it comes to rice.There are a few exceptions like mochi rice (rice cake) and sake rice. Iwate being a little more traditional in known for growing some of these lesser known varieties of rice, this is just one example. Most people in Europe or North America would know Japanese rice as sushi rice. In Japan it's simply rice, fortunately a few farmers are still growing some more traditional types of rice like this Heritage Black Rice. If you go to farmers markets across Japan you can probably see this kind and other varieties of rice for sale. Because of their low volume they are pricier than regular rice about 3 to 5 times the price. I consider them to be well worth the price. They are also much more nutritious than standard white rice.

Malcome Larcens @malcome.larcens

I grew up in Quebec, Canada and studied electronics in college, never worked in that field. Moved to Vancouver in the early 80's where I found my real passion, cooking. I ran my own restaurant for 14 years after that worked as a financial advisor for 4 years, I really enjoyed that too but we had ...