Rice by Renee Marton

Author:Renee Marton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Reaktion Books

Quaker puffed rice, a popular breakfast cereal.

In 1904 puffed rice, ‘shot out of cannons’, was introduced at the St Louis World’s Fair. The botanist and cereal inventor Alexander Pierce Anderson, who staged the stunt, knew that water in the precooked rice grain would turn to steam and expand through pressurized heat, thus puffing out the grain. The first commercially manufactured product in the U.S. using puffed rice, Rice Krispies cereal debuted in 1927. An early radio ad targeting children claimed the cereal would ‘snap, crackle and pop’ in a bowl of milk, and stay crunchy. Of course, puffed rice had been manufactured in India long before Rice Krispies came into existence, and is one ingredient in snacks of all kinds, including mamra, puffed rice seasoned with curry leaves, salt, sugar, turmeric, curry paste and garlic, heated until toasted. Similarly, poha chevda is puffed or flaked rice with fennel and sesame seeds, salt, sugar, oil and garlic.

The popular dessert/snack known as Rice Krispie Treats, made with melted marshmallows and butter, was introduced in 1941. Today, ready-to-eat Rice Krispie Treats are found individually packaged, and are sold at newsstands and supermarkets. The commercially prepared version is one of the most requested snacks in the U.S. military. Rice Krispie Treats are sold in the United Kingdom, Europe, Canada and Australia.

In 1942, German chemist Eric Huzenlaub licensed his parboiling process to Gordon Harwell, who was selling ‘Uncle Ben’s Plantation Rice’. Parboiling involves pre-cooking the grain before polishing and pushes 80 per cent of the nutrients from the bran into the grain’s centre, thus making white rice more nutritious. The American military became Harwell’s chief customer and, by 1944, 20–30,000 tons of rice per year were produced, all for the war effort. After the war, Uncle Ben’s Converted Rice was marketed in the U.S., Canada, Australia and Britain; it became the best-selling rice in the U.S., and is still the leading rice sold. Today there are all kinds of seasoned and pre-cooked Uncle Ben’s rice combinations. Once again, precooked and dried rice in various forms has existed in India for generations; it is another old idea reinvented for a new market.

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