Broken rice
Oryza sativa · Grain
Top 10 pairings
Broken rice — com tam in Vietnamese, riz brisé in French — is not a variety of rice but a grade: the small, fractured grains left over when whole rice cracks during milling and polishing. Once a cheap by-product fed to livestock or the poor, it has become a prized culinary rice in its own right, cooking up soft, quick and clingy with a fuller, chewier bite than intact grains, and it is the defining staple of Saigon's com tam and a workhorse of West African cooking.
Picking a good onedrag
Sound dry grain, fragrant or cleanly neutralRancid crayon, or holed and webbed
Pantry standardEveryday bestRice takes up arsenic you can't see. Rinse it, cook it in plenty of water, then drain.
Smell at the open bagAlmost nothing, as white rice is
White or brown, whole or milledBrown, red or black: buy small
The grains themselvesA few chalky grains, broken tips
A handful through your fingersA little starchy powder, normal
These cues are Rice's, and hold across its varieties; where this one differs, its own page says so.