White rice may be the most common type that you know. Rice world exist the plentiful types that we cannot handle all. It is said that there are the very long list with a tens of thousands of rice types in the world today. They are attached with the bustle world trading that includes the fluctuation no less than any of bustling trading market does.
In the long list of types, white rice is a very important part and it contains itself many types may make you to be confused. Each area has different types of rice. And in the case you concern about rice as a part of meal planning, some details related to rice types may be an interesting and useful topic for you to review.
With an unlimited list of types, there are some typical features to help to divide the rice types such as the length and shape, the texture, the colors and aroma. And in this article, mostly the rice types mentioned belong to Oryza savita or Asian rice.
Length and shape
Length and shape are the typical features to distinguish rice types. There are the long grain rice, the medium grain rice and the short grain rice. The length and shape are prescribed by the rice seeds. And each area has the appropriate choice of rice to develop base on the soil and weather conditions also the needs and tastes of consumers.
Beside there is the type of rice that does not base on the rice seeds but from the milling after harvesting. It is broken rice. It has the smallest size related to length and shape. This type may be the product from all 3 types above related to length and shape.
The texture
Related to the texture, there is two main textures included sticky status and normal status. The sticky status is appeared clearly after cooking. The sticky rice has always the stickiness more than the normal rice when cooked while the normal rice as popular white rice polished may have different textures such as sticky a little bit, soft or tender or hard, moist or dry. In the uncooked status, the sticky rice has the opaque status in grain more than normal one. The water added when cooking is not much as adding into the normal rice. And it is said that steaming sticky rice is better than boiling white most of normal rice types are advised to be boiled.
The color of rice
You may find out in the market different colored rice. Is it rice with natural color of or dyed rice? It is said that most of the natural rice has the brown color after removing its husk. Brown rice is divided into two groups with the normal grain and sticky grain. After milling and polishing the normal brown rice becomes whiter and brighter. The most common rice that you see in the market is the white rice. It itself is not white and bright like that. It is the polished rice with the natural outer removed.
However there are also different types that have typical natural color themselves such as opaque white rice, red rice or pink rice, purple rice, black rice etc. These types are usually richer in nutrition than polished rice because the outer is not removed completely. Colored rice is mostly the stickiness. They are considered the sticky rice excepting red rice or pink one with the harder grain and less sticky than other colored rice.
The aroma of rice
The natural aroma of the rice is also the typical feature to help the consumers who decide to choose it for consuming or not. In reality, most of rice types give the light aroma if they are cooked as soon as harvesting. However the fragrance of new rice is usually disappeared after a period of storage.
Interestingly for some fragrant types of rice like jasmine rice typically, it gives the featured fragrance when it is cooked regardless of a period of storage for some months. For jasmine rice and some fragrant rice types, they have always the fragrance preserved because the aroma is one of the features of them. And these types are usually soft with stickiness a little bit after cooking even it is in the cool status.
