Welcome to the summary page for FabulousFusionFood's Cook's Guide entry for Rice along with all the recipes employing Rice presented on this site, with 874 recipes in total.

This is a continuation of an entire series of pages that will, I hope, allow my visitors to better navigate this site. As well as displaying recipes by name, country and region of origin I am now planning a whole series of pages where recipes can be located by meal type and main ingredient. This page gives a listing of all the Rice recipes added to this site.

These recipes, all contain Rice as a major wild food ingredient.

Rice is a cereal grain and in its domesticated form is the staple food of over half of the world's population, particularly in Asia and Africa. Rice is the seed of the grass species Oryza sativa (Asian rice)—or, much less commonly, Oryza glaberrima (African rice). Asian rice was domesticated in China some 13,500 to 8,200 years ago; African rice was domesticated in Africa about 3,000 years ago.

Oryza sativa rice was first domesticated in China 9,000 years ago, by people of Neolithic cultures in the Upper and Lower Yangtze, associated with Hmong-Mien-speakers and pre-Austronesians, respectively. The functional allele for nonshattering, the critical indicator of domestication in grains, as well as five other single-nucleotide polymorphisms, is identical in both indica and japonica. This implies a single domestication event for O. sativa. Both indica and japonica forms of Asian rice sprang from a single domestication event in China from the wild rice Oryza rufipogon. Despite this evidence, it appears that indica rice arose when japonica arrived in India about 4,500 years ago and hybridised with another rice, whether an undomesticated proto-indica or wild O. nivara.

Rice was introduced early into Sino-Tibetan cultures in northern China by around 6000 to 5600 years ago, and to the Korean peninsula and Japan by around 5500 to 3200 years ago. It was also carried into Taiwan by the Dapenkeng culture by 5500 to 4000 years ago, before spreading southwards via the Austronesian migrations to Island Southeast Asia, Madagascar, and Guam, but did not survive the voyage to the rest of the Pacific. It reached Austroasiatic and Kra-Dai-speakers in Mainland Southeast Asia and southern China by 5000 years ago.

Rice spread around the rest of the world through cultivation, migration and trade, eventually to the Americas as part of the Columbian exchange after 1492. The now less common Oryza glaberrima (African rice) was independently domesticated in Africa around 3,000 years ago, and introduced to the Americas by the Spanish. Italian Arborio rice is a cultivar of Oryza sativa subsp Japonica.

Dry rice grain is milled to remove the outer layers; depending on how much is removed, products range from brown rice to rice with germ and white rice. Some is parboiled to make it easy to cook. Rice contains no gluten; it provides protein but not all the essential amino acids needed for good health. Rice of different types is eaten around the world. Long-grain rice tends to stay intact on cooking; medium-grain rice is stickier, and is used for sweet dishes, and in Italy for risotto; and sticky short-grain rice is used in Japanese sushi as it keeps its shape when cooked. White rice when cooked contains 29% carbohydrate and 2% protein, with some manganese. Golden rice is a variety produced by genetic engineering to contain vitamin A.