Wild rice
Zizania · Grain
Top 10 pairings
Wild rice is not true rice at all but the long, slender, glossy black-brown seed of Zizania, a tall aquatic grass native to the lakes and slow rivers of North America. Hand-gathered for thousands of years by Ojibwe and other Great Lakes peoples — who know it as manoomin, the good berry — it cooks into firm, chewy grains that split to reveal a pale interior, tasting nutty, earthy and faintly tea-like, far more assertive and savoury than ordinary white rice.
Picking a good onedrag
Toasted and tea-like, the grain hard and wholeRancid crayon, or webbed and holed
Pantry standardEveryday bestThe long simmer - soup, stuffing, a grain salad. It grows standing in water and takes up what the water carries, and no grain shows that.
Smell at the open bagAlmost nothing - hard, dry, a faint toasted grassiness
The grains themselvesMixed lengths and shades, some tan or greenish - lake rice
A handful through your fingersA little grit and loose hull on the palm - normal in lake rice
How it is soldWhole grains, no date given - sound, but bought blind