new rice

[edwardsboi]

When I went into Mitsuwa, I noticed that some of their bags of rice bore a sticker that said they were 'new rice'. I've bought bags of rice from other asian supermarkets, and don't recall seeing a similar sticker.

Given the name, I'm assuming new rice is newer and fresher than regular rice. What's the difference, if any, in taste and texture? Are you supposed to cook them differently? And, if new rice is better and on sale, should I stock up on these bags? Or, by the time I eat the later bags, they'll no longer be new?

[Hiroyuki]

In Japan, such stickers are used in the fall, when rice harvest begins, to differentiate shin mai from ko mai.

Shin mai (lit. new rice) means the current year's crop, while ko mai (lit. old rice) means the previous year's crop.

In general, as for Japanese varieties of rice, the newer the better.

Ko mai is less sticky than shin mai, and is suitable for certain dishes like chahan (stir-fried rice). At many sushi shops in Japan, they blend ko mai with shin mai at a certain ratio to achieve the desired stickiness.

You can see a new rice sticker in the second and third photo of this entry in my blog.

[prasantrin]

For me, new rice cooks up softer than old rice (especially really old rice, if you ever keep around rice longer than you should). I also find I prefer to cook new rice with a little less water than I usually use.

[Hiroyuki]

There are some people who recommend using less water for shin mai because it contains more moisture, and then there are others who say that with modern technology, the moisture of rice is accurately controlled whether it be shin mai or ko mai. I tend to believe the latter. I did some googling, and here are some of my findings:

According to one source, it was common in the past to cook shin mai with less water because it contained more moisture, but today, rice is adjusted to a moisture content of 15.5% and stored in such a way to keep that mositure content. Another source says that shin mai is cooked soft because its structure is still immature and soft.

[Hiroyuki]

When I went into Mitsuwa, I noticed that some of their bags of rice bore a sticker that said they were 'new rice'. I've bought bags of rice from other asian supermarkets, and don't recall seeing a similar sticker.

Given the name, I'm assuming new rice is newer and fresher than regular rice. What's the difference, if any, in taste and texture? Are you supposed to cook them differently? And, if new rice is better and on sale, should I stock up on these bags? Or, by the time I eat the later bags, they'll no longer be new?

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The most important thing about purchasing rice is to look for the milling date. Once milled, rice will deterioriote quickly. If you are not a regular user of rice, you should buy just an enough amount of rice.