+Deep Blue Rice

[wildseed57]

The last time I was in the big city (Springfield) which is about 70 miles from me I went into the health food store and while I was looking at some red quinoa seeds, I spotted a large self serve container of Blue rice. The rice was so blue I at first thought that it had been dyed blue, but then I remembered that there actually is a blue rice and at one point in time only the Emperor of China was the only one that could eat it. I have know way of remembering just were this came from, probably the Carolina's as I don't think it came from China, although I could be wrong, maybe it came from Hawaii? My question about it is, is it a wet land rice or dry cultivated? I think it would be very interesting to cook with and maybe serve it along side some grilled shrimp or fish and some freshly grilled corn on the cob.
George W.

[castanea]

It's my impression that blue is not a color that is found in rice. I have seen red rice, pink rice, purple rice and black rice, but not blue rice. Some of the purple rices can exhibit a bluish highlight under some lighting but I've never seen a true blue.

If you find out more about it, please let us know.

[blueadzuki]

From what I understand, a lot of that blue rice is in fact dyed (according to some of the sites I found in the web, some Malay people like to dye thier rice blue with an extract of the "littoria pea" (I assume they actually meant the Clitoria pea, i.e. the butterfly pea). as this rice starts as white (and probably polished) rice, I would imagine it may no longer have any germ to germinate
The emperor exclusive rice (usually called "forbidden rice") is black (well really, really dark purple.) That will grow (I did in fact grow some of it in my room when I was a kid, though It died before it got around to flowering) and I dont remember flodding the pot (though I overwater a lot so those results are likey ambigous) It does look interesting when cooked and by interesting I mean scary. My mom once used it to make paella and the result looked like the filling of a blueberry pie, and stained the cooking pot so badly it had to be thrown out (we call it the "black death" paella incident) I think the color comes from MASSIVE quantities of antocyanins (as a sort of tell, if you look at water the rice has been cold soaked in, and light comes through it the light is crimson, not purple (this is often the case with strong anthocyanin solutions). I would imagine it would be good for dyeing as well (much like some here have suggested doing with purple corn husks. It might also make a really interesting rice drink, a sort of horchata analouge to chicha morado.

[wildseed57]

You were right about the blue rice being stained that way, I got the Forbidden Rice which is purple black and the blue rice mixed up. I can see how the color could stain a pan. I think that they compared the rice having more anthocyanins than Blueberries by weight, keeping the rice from loosing any of the anthocyanins might be hard unless it was just steamed and then used from there. It also might be kept if you were to make rice paper or rice cakes. I wonder if you could make a purple rice wine or beer from it. I think the next time I get a chance I'll get me a bag of it, I read a little about it which wasn't a lot of info about it, but what there was, was interesting. I still don't remember if they said if it neede a dry or flooded paddy.
George W.

[blueadzuki]

Mar 16, 2011 13:51:57 GMT -5 wildseed57 said:

You were right about the blue rice being stained that way, I got the Forbidden Rice which is purple black and the blue rice mixed up. I can see how the color could stain a pan. I think that they compared the rice having more anthocyanins than Blueberries by weight, keeping the rice from loosing any of the anthocyanins might be hard unless it was just steamed and then used from there. It also might be kept if you were to make rice paper or rice cakes.

In point of fact, I understand some "edgy" dim sum houses have experimented with using forbidden rice to make purple or black wrappers for dumpings, (much as people in italy sometimes add squid ink to pasta dough to make black noodles (I've never really like those no matter what people say I can taste the ink) most of these would have the same problem the paella had, anything you add to the rice takes on it's color (that paella had black shrimp, black chicken (and I dont mean a fuzzy feathered one) black waterchesnuts etc.) I think a lot of the things would come out just flat unappetizing looking, mei fun would end up looking like a tangle of black electic wire, rice cake (I'm referring to the chinese version that's similar to the Phillipine plutto and sued like a noodle. Since "rice cake" is somewhat ambiguous term I have no idea if the one you had in mind or if you meant mochi or ever the puffed rice things most people think of in the west as rice cakes (and the reason it took me so long to order the chinese version (more fool me) would end up looking like a plate of sliced boudin, or a charcoal briquette (Japanese) or a disk of carbonized wood (western). And I don't really want to think about what congee would look like.

Mar 16, 2011 13:51:57 GMT -5 wildseed57 said:

I wonder if you could make a purple rice wine or beer from it.

Almost certainly. The stuff certainly ferments well enough, I found that out the second time when I left some to soak in a jar back at colledge while I was on a long weekend and it basically sprized all over me when I opened it when I got back (to make this worse, that was the trip when the airline lost the suitcase that had 90% of my wardrobe in it so I was short on clothes and really was not thrilled to have my last turtleneck suddenly get huge indelible red spots all over it.) so It would likey be very easy to make rice beer.