Types of Rice - Thousands of Varieties

Rice has been around for centuries and has grown in popularity year after year with the increase in population. The overall span of growing rice has lead to various types of rice and resulting into 40 thousand rice varieties. All these varieties result in beneficial rice types for specific environments for growing but also for the use of rice in cooking.

Many colors and sizes of rice are on the market today, from colors of black rice, brown rice, yellow rice and white rice.From rice sizes of, long grain rice, medium grain rice and short grain rice. Below you can find information on different types of rice with classifications:

Grain Types of Rice

Long Grain Rice – Long grain rice is the most popular and longest grain size where the length of the grain is 4 or even 5 times the width. The length is classed to be larger than 6.0 millimeters.

Medium Grain Rice – Softer than long grain rice but not as soft as Short grain rice when cooked, great for use in Risotto food dishes. Length of Medium grain rice is classified to be between 5.3 – 5.9 millimeters in length. In relation to the width the length will not be 3 times longer than its width.

Short Grain Rice – Typically used in rice pudding dishes due to its sticky and moist attributes when cooked. The size of the grain is classified to be anything up to 5.2 millimeters in length and does not range higher in 2 times the size of its width.

Overall sizes of rice grain not only correspond to the physical size attribute of the grain, the more tender and soft the rice grain is the shorter the grain. The larger the rice grains the less sticky and moist the rice will be when cooked.

White Rice & Brown Rice

Brown rice and white rice can both be resulted from the same rice grain harvest! Some do not know but white rice is actually resulted from additionally milled brown rice or other whole grain rice. In the milling process of rice, white rice can be resulted from the removal of the bran layers in the grain which gives brown rice and other whole-grain rices their attributes. Whole grain rice such as brown rice actually offers more nutrition than white rice.

Colors of Rice

There are a mix of colors that rice can be, in general most of us will talk about white rice and brown rice. However other rice varieties are available for instance black rice and red rice. When dining out and you order a rice dish you may be presented with various colors of rice. The colors of rice are not always their natural color, many dishes involve colorings and spices that change the color of rice. One example of this is yellow rice, the color is given by the use of the spice turmeric. On top of that processing of rice reduce layers around the grain (including husks) which can result in lose of colors. Really when you dive into the type of rice you can find out the original production can represent a different look and color to what you thought it to be.