Oryza sativa, a grain that is a staple food for roughly half of humanity.
Rice has several advantages over most other staple foods. It gives higher and more reliable yields than wheat and barley. The moisture content of the grain is low when it is harvested, and is further reduced by drying. It therefore keeps well in storage; in cool, dark, and reasonably dry conditions its quality declines only a little after three years and it should be quite eatable after as much as ten years. It is easy to transport, because it is not heavy with moisture and does not bruise. Most important of all, rice has a good flavour and texture when cooked, absorbing and setting off to advantage the flavour of any sauce or other cooking liquid.
Although most people associate rice with a hot, wet climate, it was not originally a tropical plant. It is descended from a wild grass that was probably first cultivated in the southern foothills of the E. Himalayas and the upper reaches of the Irrawaddy, Salween, and Mekong. Rice-farming presumably began only after someone had discovered the technique of rice-cooking (see rice as food). In 2003 the BBC reported that archaeologists in South Korea had found the world's oldest known domesticated rice, which would push back by thousands of years the recorded origins of Asia's staple food. Professor Lee Yung-jo said radioactive dating of fifty-nine burnt grains of rice found in central South Korea could place the earliest known date of rice cultivation to some fifteen thousand years ago. Professor Lee said the discovery challenges the accepted view of the origins of rice. Rice grains found near the Yellow and Yangtze rivers in China had been considered the world's oldest—they were dated between ten and a half and eleven thousand years old.
Today, the number of varieties in existence may be as many as 100,000, of which 8,000 or so are, or have recently been, grown for food. The rest are ‘wild’ rices, but not to be confused with the long, black grains of wild rice (Zizania aquatica), a different plant.
Rice is now cultivated in over 110 countries, in many different climates and environments. This versatility is the result of a very long process. Rice extended its boundaries gradually, because it took time for early farmers to breed (through seed selection) new varieties that would tolerate heat, cold, drought, flood, and local soil conditions. Because different rices cross-breed easily, and because there are many ‘wild’ varieties, the genus still defies exhaustive botanic classification. For practical purposes, agriculturists count four main types: dry or ‘upland’ rice, which is grown mainly on hillsides, often by slash-and-burn cultivation in poor soil; rain-fed rice, grown in shallow water; irrigated rice, grown in shallow water fed from storage and drainage systems that make crops more or less independent of rainfall; and deep-water rice, grown in estuaries or other areas liable to flooding to a depth of as much as 5 m (16′). Different types predominate in different regions of the world. Mainland China grows irrigated rice almost exclusively; Latin America is about 75% upland rice; S. Asia as a whole is about one-third rain-fed, and rather less than one-half irrigated.
For agricultural purposes, rice varieties are also grouped by their growing characteristics. Some tolerate cold or heat, others drought or salt water. The time they take to come to maturity varies from 90 to 180 days or even longer, and they vary just as much in the number of tillers (grain-bearing stems) that each plant produces, in the height of their stems (from 0.5 m to almost 2 m/1.6–6.5′), and in their reaction to the length of daylight hours. Light-sensitive rices flower only when the day is exactly the right length to give them time to ripen their grain before the growing season ends.
The characteristics on which growers focus most attention overlap with but are by no means identical with those which are important to consumers. From the consumers' point of view the classification and nomenclature of rice is complex and sometimes perplexing—perhaps more so than for any of the other major plant foods.
Rice farming and breeding have passed, and are passing, through a continuing revolution, of which the ‘Green Revolution’ of the 1960s and 1970s was only a chapter. The most ancient techniques remain in use and still have much to commend them. All over S. and E. Asia, rice is grown in small terraced fields which can only be cultivated by hand. Outside the USA and Australia, the average size of a rice farm is between 0.5 and 2 hectares (1–5 acres), and small farmers obviously cannot afford sophisticated machinery. The most modern rice varieties are often farmed by old methods, sown in nursery beds, transplanted by hand, and reaped with a sickle or even, stem by stem, with a tiny blade concealed between the fingers so as not to offend the goddess of the growing rice. At the other end of the technological spectrum, pre-germinated seeds are broadcast by a low-flying aircraft, the flow of water through the fields is controlled by a computer, and a combine harvester gathers in the crop.
One advantage of the old methods was that every ricefield contained a wide range of genes, which protected the crop against total loss; whatever pest or disease struck, some, at least, of the plants would resist it. When no fertilizer or other chemical was used, the natural ecosystem of the flooded field supported fish, frogs, and waterfowl which enriched the soil and fed the farmer. A skilled reaper could also select, as she cut, the finest heads of grain to be set aside as next year's seed.
Modern varieties of rice, developed in great quantity in the search for higher yields, tend to be given initials and numbers, such as IR36, a variety bred by the IRRI (International Rice Research Institute) and believed to be perhaps the most-cultivated single crop in history; in the 1980s it was estimated that over 10% of the world's rice land was sown with this one variety.
Generally, however, the rice plant gives high yields in the right conditions, and early farmers soon realized that the best varieties were those that liked shallow, slowly moving water. In fact, irrigated rice can be grown year after year on the same land indefinitely, and may produce two or even three harvests a year; yields are low, but dependable. But the work of building and maintaining a system of fields, with the channels to supply and drain off water, is immense, and requires a close-knit, orderly community. This was a price that many societies were willing to pay in return for the benefits rice gave them. It is both a generous and a demanding crop.
Perhaps for that reason, rice spread slowly. It was established in N. India, in S. and C. China, and all over mainland SE Asia, by about 2000 bc. By about the 1st century ad it was grown in what is now Sarawak and Sulawesi, and probably in the Philippines, where the immense flights of terraced fields in the hills around Banaue are said to be over 2,000 years old. Much of the terracing that so takes the eye in Java and Bali, however, is of relatively recent date.
The next major advances were into the Middle East and Japan, sometime between 300 bc and 200 ad. It was not until 1900 that cold-tolerant varieties were bred capable of flourishing in the climate of Hokkaido, and by that time Japan was on the brink of a thoroughly modern programme of genetic improvement; rice had long been the country's staple, and indeed plays a leading role in the foundation myth of the Japanese imperial family.
In the Mediterranean, the Greeks and Romans knew about rice, but regarded it as an expensive import, to be used mainly as a medicine. It was probably brought from India to the Near East by the Persians, but they never thought of it as their staple diet, and it was not grown in Egypt until the 6th or 7th century ad. It is not mentioned in the Bible, although Coverdale's English Bible of 1535 translates the food that Jacob gave to Esau as ‘ryse’ instead of lentils (Genesis 25: 34).
Rice cooked in clarified butter is said to have been the favourite dish of the Prophet Muhammad. His followers certainly took rice to N. Africa, Spain, and Sicily, into Turkey, and across the Sahara to W. Africa, where a different species, O. glaberrima, was already cultivated (and still is).
By the 13th century rice was being imported into N. Europe. The OED's first citation of the word is from Henry III's household accounts in 1234. By the 15th century its attraction had been introduced to N. Italy, where it flourishes in the plains.
In the so-called Columbian exchange of natural resources, rice was one of the Old World's finest gifts to the New. But it did not become established in America until almost two centuries after Columbus' voyages, another example of how slowly rice has moved to new homes. Many varieties were tried, and a certain amount of selective breeding carried out, before the crop could be adapted to the soils and climates of the Americas. In the north, the first successful crops are said to have been grown from seed brought to Charleston by a ship from Madagascar, while the knowledge of how to grow rice may have been brought from W. Africa by slaves selected for their farming skills; see Karen Hess (1992) for a discussion and much other information about rice in S. Carolina. A pioneer of genetic improvement of all natural products was Thomas Jefferson, who travelled to Piedmont to find out why Italian rice fetched a higher price in the Paris market than Carolina rice, and smuggled seed out in his pockets.
‘Carolina gold’, whatever its genetic origins, flourished in the freshwater tidal swamps around Cape Fear from the 1690s until competition from Mississippi valley rice in the later part of the 19th century. Shortly afterwards, Japanese immigrants to California set up the west coast rice industry. Carolina gold is, however, being grown and marketed once again in the USA. Some of the crop's most spectacular gains, in fact, have taken place in the past 100 years, in the Americas, N. Japan, China, E. Indonesia, and parts of Australia. At the same time, it has continued to move from being a subsistence staple towards becoming a commodity, a foodstuff traded on local and then on world markets.
Much of the rice now being grown in SE Asia and elsewhere is genetically modified to give higher yields, resistance to pests, and better flavour—all tailored to match local conditions. Without GM rice, the outlook for world production would be even worse than it is.
Rice products. Rice is ground into rice flour (used for puddings, cakes, biscuits, etc.) or (even finer) rice powder, rolled into flakes, ‘popped’ by cooking it in pressure vessels which are then suddenly opened, and pre-cooked to make ‘instant’ rice. A modern rice mill exhibits an astonishing variety of high technology among the traditional noise and dust.
Rice bran, which is removed in the milling and processing of rice, is still used as animal feed, and can also be processed and sold as a beneficial garnish or additive for foods. In Japan, where it is known as nuka, rice bran is an important medium for pickling.
A major product of rice is the rice noodle of which many types are found in Asia and China (see noodles of Asia; noodles of China).
Rice is also fermented to make vinegars, rice wine, saké, and tapé. In Latin America, especially in Ecuador, a little known but interesting fermented rice product (arroz fermentado/amarillo, or Sierra rice) is made and consumed.
Considered as food, rice is perceived in different ways in different cultures. Attitudes towards the proper way to cook and eat it seem to depend on the role rice plays in the lives of the people. In many communities where it has long been established as the principal staple, it is revered as divine and is still cooked and served in the plainest possible way; the dishes that accompany it may be elaborate and exquisite, but the rice itself is too precious to be treated as just another ingredient. (Of course there are dishes such as Cantonese fried rice, and Nasi goreng (the Indonesian equivalent), which do not conform to this pattern.)
At the other extreme—the other end of the trade route—rice was in the distant past an expensive import, so rare that it was locked in the spice cupboard and carefully recorded in the household accounts. In medieval Europe it was made into milk puddings with refined sugar (also very scarce); this is one of the origins of blancmange. In Elizabethan England it still had a little of the magic of strangeness; steeped in cow's milk with white breadcrumbs, sugar, and powdered fennel seed it was given to nursing mothers. In Charles I's time rice boiled in milk with sugar and cinnamon was regarded, as most foods are sooner or later, as an aphrodisiac. But then it became easier to obtain, and gradually opened the way towards general use and led to the wealth of English rice puddings, Scandinavian rice dishes such as the rice porridge of Norway traditionally made for Christmas Eve, and delicacies such as the rice tart of Liège.
Meanwhile, a third attitude to rice had developed in regions where it was grown as a food crop, played an important role in most people's diet, but was not the only or a major staple food. In much of India, the Levant, the Middle East, and N. and W. Africa, rice became the basis of a huge range of savoury dishes, all of which may be regarded as variations on the pilaf.
Whatever approach is taken to cooking rice, it will be a valuable source of nutrients (see box) and the essential process in the kitchen will be the same: to break open the cell walls and release the starch inside. Boiling water or steam does this very effectively, and if the water is part of a sauce, or is flavoured in any way, the flavour will quickly be taken up by the rice itself. However, the individuality of each grain survives cooking. The grains expand greatly as they absorb the cooking liquid, of which they take in surprisingly large quantities.
Although the use of boiling water or other liquid or steam, at some stage, is essential to every form of rice cookery, the details vary greatly from culture to culture, as does the appearance of the finished dish. For examples, see paella; pilaf; risotto.
If rice is cooked in a constricting wrapper, e.g. of banana leaf or aluminium foil, the grains are forced together into a compact mass which can then be cut up and eaten or can be further cooked (usually fried). This ‘compressed rice’ is popular all over Indonesia (where it is called lontong) and in some other parts of SE Asia.
All the above refers to rice as though it were a single ingredient. There are, however, many kinds of rice and, of all the major plant foods, rice seems to be the most perplexing in its classification and nomenclature. The problem arises from the fact that different systems of classification are adopted for different purposes. The main ones are as follows:
The above list is far from being exhaustive, but gives some idea of the categories which may be met in shops.
See also biriani; congee; dosa; idli; jollof rice; kedgeree; khichri; mochi; rice cakes of the Philippines; rice puddings; shola; sushi.
Roger Owen has worked with his wife Sri on Indonesian Food and Cookery, and collaborated with her in writing The Rice Book (1993). He is co-author, with Sri, of the forthcoming Oxford Companion to Southeast Asian Food.
Carney, Judith (2001), Black Rice, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP.
Grist, D. H. (1953), Rice, London: Longman.
Hess, Karen (1992), The Carolina Rice Kitchen, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.
Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko (1993), Rice as Self: Japanese Identities through Time, Princeton: Princeton UP.
Owen, Sri (1993), The Rice Book, London: Transworld.
