Go Wild with Rice

Whether white or brown, domestic rice isn't a dish most of us savor for itself. But wild rice, a somewhat distant relative of the farmed varieties, is a colorful, flavorful dish in its own right, that takes an anarchistic cooking style.

Indigenous to the rivers, ponds and wetlands of the Great Lakes region of North America, wild rice plays a vital role in the ecosystem, providing seeds for birds and sheltering snails and many valuable insects. For thousands of years, wild rice has been an important food source for Native Americans, and their traditional methods for hand-harvesting the grain allowed both people and the environment to share in the bounty.

In the 1960s, farmers took an interest in the crop but were initially unable to grow it commercially. Heirloom varieties of wild rice shatter easily, that is, some of the seeds ripen before others and simply fall off their stalks, seeding the following year's crop and providing a steady food supply for all the creatures that consume it.

While Native American tribes worked with the natural cycle of wild rice, harvesting small amounts from the same plants over time, commercial farmers wanted to be able to mechanically harvest all of the rice at one time. As a result, new breeds of wild rice were developed to be shatter resistant for easier harvesting.

As commercial cultivation increased, so did the popularity of wild rice. From a culinary standpoint, a welcome development—our culinary horizons were broadened—but for the Native American tribes that relied on the sale of wild rice as an important part of their economy, mechanically harvested wild rice was an economic disaster.

Everything that modern society produces is expensive—but often the true cost is hidden. In the case of hand-harvested wild rice, the high cost is easily apparent. The process of harvesting and processing the rice is labor intensive and turns out small yields. As a result, wild rice has traditionally been a luxury item. Labor-intensive traditional methods for harvesting wild rice support, rather than destroy the eco-system; the cost consumers pay is high but the cost to the environment is very low.

Mechanically harvested wild rice on the other hand is far cheaper for the consumer, but far costlier for the environment. Most commercially produced wild rice is grown in California as opposed to its native habitat. The rice is grown in paddies that are flooded with water during the growing season and then drained for the harvest. Aside from using substantial amounts of water, wild rice farmers consider birds and aquatic animals that live off their crop to be pests. As a result, paddy-grown wild rice is often treated with herbicides and pesticides to reduce or eliminate these pests from the fields.