Puffed rice is rice that has been exploded into light, dry, crisp grains — known across South Asia as muri, mudhi, mamra, pori or murmura, and sold in the West as puffed-rice cereal. Each tiny grain of Oryza sativa is heated until the moisture trapped inside flashes to steam and bursts the endosperm outward, leaving an airy, brittle puff many times its original size. Nearly flavourless and shatter-crisp on its own, it is the featherweight backbone of Indian street food — the bulk of bhel puri and jhal muri — and the puff in breakfast cereals and energy bars the world over. Cheap, gluten-free and endlessly absorbent, it soaks up chutney, milk or spice the instant it meets them.