For anyone who thinks of rice as plain and boring — well, there isn’t a grain of truth to that idea.
In reality, rice is a pantry powerhouse, highly versatile and immensely receptive to anything you might like to throw at it. If you’re stumped by what to make for dinner or stuck in a cooking rut, putting rice at the center of your plans (rather than just to the side of your plate) can be the key to opening the door to meals that are new and exciting but still easy enough to pull off on a weeknight.
Globally, rice is a mainstay — it’s the primary food staple for more than 50% of the world’s population. But while eating rice may be a cornerstone for sustenance, preparing it — and doing so well — is a blend of culinary art and food science. Unlocking the power of rice, whether through toasting raw grains to heighten their nutty notes (an essential technique for countless pilafs; releasing the starches by stewing grains (broken to encourage creaminess) into a savory mushroom porridge; simmering rice with broth to build a hearty casserole of baked rice with clams; or cooking it in condensed milk to make a sweet, sticky rice pudding.
Even the simplest rice preparation contains countless short and easy routes to a comforting, satisfying meal, whether you adorn the tender cooked rice simply with a pat of butter, dress it with tangy vinaigrette for a Greek rice salad, or shape it into rice balls for a quick snack of onigiri. So keep the pantry stocked with your favorite varieties, and start cooking to rethink your rice.
Once you start thinking about rice, it's difficult to stop. It's basically impossible to overstate how important rice is to the ways people around the globe eat. Rice is the source of one-fifth of all the calories consumed by the world's population. Rice forms the backbone of millions of people's diets. Rice has been a key player in historical events and a vital element of too many food cultures to name.
Once you start thinking about rice, it's difficult to stop. It's basically impossible to overstate how important rice is to the ways people around the globe eat. Rice is the source of one-fifth of all the calories consumed by the world's population.
Chef BJ Dennis, a Charleston, South Carolina, native and Gullah Geechee culinary expert, has dedicated years to tracing the lineage of strains of rice that enslaved people brought to the United States. He's researched how enslaved West Africans, forced from their homes in rice-growing regions, applied their knowledge to planting and tending rice for their enslavers and for themselves. By 1800, in Charleston and its surrounding communities, there were more than a hundred kinds of rice. The ingenuity of enslaved people fueled a rice boom centered on a particular long-grain varietal called Carolina Gold, prized for its flavor and versatility. Carolina Gold's dominance ended with the Civil War and soon became difficult to find. It was the Gullah Geechee people, descendants of the original West Africans, who kept its memory alive. Rice was a transfer food, another way that generations of Black cooks like Dennis have shaped American cuisine.
The United States alone grows 20 billion pounds of rice annually, a number that is dwarfed by the output of China, Vietnam, Indonesia, and other countries. It can be simple comfort food, a crispy treat, or an elaborate, special-occasion dish. Without it we wouldn't have plov, sticky rice, paella, biryani, jollof rice, sushi, bibimbap, broken rice, tahdig, fried rice, nasi goreng, arroz con pollo, rice and beans, risotto, dirty rice, or the simple pleasure of yogurt rice, a bowl of rice mixed with yogurt and dotted with curry leaves. The more our editors talk about it, the more it became clear: Rice is everything, and it touches everyone.
There are also stories about what rice means on a personal level, and how it shapes and enriches the conversations we have about our identities and families. We reached out to writers, chefs, and other rice obsessives to share their own personal rice journeys. Courtney Sprewer explores the oft-overlooked Minute Rice and what it means to Black Midwestern families, and Amethyst Ganaway explains red rice and its connection to Gullah Geechee culture. Leah Koenig looks at the world of Plov, and Lenore Adkins writes about chef Peter Prime's Trinidadian Pelau. Mari Uyehara dives into the state of furikake, the classic Japanese rice seasoning. Valerie Erwin, the brains behind Geechee Girl Rice Cafe in Philadelphia, talks about being on the vanguard of the rice renaissance. It's enough to get anyone excited about rice, or at least add a bag or two to their next grocery list.
