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Comment by abeppu | Hacker News Reader

> A: People across the world say, "It's the best-tasting rice in the world, so why isn't more of it being exported?" Japanese agricultural officials often comment, "We can't compete with cheap rice produced in Thailand and elsewhere," but that's not the case. Just like you have luxury and standard cars, there are different kinds of rice. Luxury cars won't lose out to ordinary ones even if the price is higher.

Totally not the point of this, but is Japanese rice really "the best-tasting"? Don't get me wrong, I enjoy California-produced Japanese-style short-grained varieties (I'm not sure whether I've bought actual Japanese-grown rice) -- in some applications. But sometimes you want a jasmine or a basmati or something else, and it seems like that's a matter of preference and what you're used to and what other food you're eating it with, more than "better" or "luxury".

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If a "Japanese agricultural official" is not claiming that Japan produces the best-tasting rice in the world, he is failing at his job! His job is to promote Japanese agriculture, at home and abroad.

As you say, there are different kinds of rice that taste and feel differently, and you should use the right one for your recipe, but debating with a marketing person about their superlative is a futile exercise.

Yep, I'm sure Ohio has the best corn in the world if you ask the ODA and New York has the best pizza if you ask their tourism division.

> If a "Japanese agricultural official" is not claiming that Japan produces the best-tasting rice in the world, he is failing at his job!

Surely this would be better served with a believable statement rather than blatantly subjective hyperbole.

My wife is Japanese and we buy Japanese style rice grown in California (Nishiki Premium). She still complains it isn't as good, but my theory is it's actually the water used in prep. Our Wisconsin water is incredibly hard, and water in Tokyo won't scale a kettle EVER. It's very, very good.

Try The Rice Factory, a rice importer in New York state. They import prize rice from Japan, in refrigerated containers. It's a clear step up in quality from anything grown in California.

Well yeah, but you're comparing steak from the blue ribbon cow to Tyson, I sure hope they win. You might still be right about regional quality but you should at least compare the best both have to offer.

I would be amazed if rice grown by Japanese immigrants like Koda or Tamkai couldn't reach the level and it really was the land that made the difference.

I would agree that Tamaki Haiga is up there with imported Japanese rice. I think calrose and it's offshoots are less delicious options.

Test your theory by using distilled or soft water to make your rice.

Nailed it, More often it is the water than the other ingredient even with the coffee

Especially with coffee, the difference between hard and soft water when making coffee is very noticeable.

My family buys bags of flour every time we're in Canada because the old recipes apparently don't taste quite right with anything else. We'll probably keep doing it because it's kind of fun.

Canadian "all-purpose" flour has a higher gluten content than American "all-purpose" flour. It's closer to American "bread flour".

That's aside from whatever harder-to-measure taste differences it might have, but it makes a big difference by itself.

You could run an experiment pretty trivially to determine if the hardness of the water is the issue. Get one of those charcoal filters, get some coffee filters, and cook some rice with various combinations of the filtering.

The previous place I lived in had very hard water, and I found that running the water through both a coffee filter and then a Brita charcoal filter worked rather well to soften the water and improve the quality of the rice I was cooking.

I personally find the idea of water being important to be overstated. It’s frequently repeated as fact but I don’t see it quantified.

The only experiment I have found that attempts to measure this is by Kenji with pizza. In his test, the water did not matter.

https://www.seriouseats.com/does-nyc-water-make-a-difference...

I might agree with your wife. :P

Nishiki uses an offshoot of Calrose rice, which is okay but popular Japanese rice is often Koshihikari or Yumipurika: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nishiki_rice (do click the link for SICK web art on a random wikipedia page)

If you can find some https://umamimart.com/products/tamaki-haiga-rice is one of my favs.

Or as someone commented below the rice from The Rice Factory is solid if you are looking for a treat: https://trf-ny.com/collections/rice

I currently have 3 varieties from TRF in my cupboard :D

Just one man's anecdote: I worked a short walk from a specialty Japanese food store when I lived in New York city. It was the kind of place that had fresh produce and fish/meat flown in from Japan a few days per week. They had a very large section of Japanese rice that had been produced in Japan (e.g. all of the packaging including ingredients etc. were in Japanese and the store manually overlaid printed labeled stickers in English). I pretty much exclusively ate rice I bought there for 2 or 3 years cooked in a mid-range Zojirushi rice cooker (as an aside - this is my favorite and most used kitchen appliance to this day and I would replace it in a heart beat if it ever stops working)

The premium brands of Japanese rice that I would buy were slightly better than the current Kokuho Rose brand I get now (this is the best I can find in semi-rural Canada). The biggest difference in quality were brown rice variants (e.g. genmai) that I have been unable to find anywhere else. But the short-grain white rice weren't so much better that I really miss them. The quality is maybe 5% better but the cost to have it imported here is more than double, so very much not worth it.

The best rice I've had is in far northeastern China (Heilongjiang or Jilin province). Which seems weird to me given the geography, but I guess I don't know shit about rice farming.

Many studies have shown that the heavy metal content in (Chinese) rice exceeds food safety standards, especially levels of cadium (Cd) and lead (Pb) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9754602/

Yea I mean I would not be surprised about this either. See also: sketchy cooking oil (sometimes literally transported in fuel tankers?), sketchy milk, etc etc. Food safety in China is still getting up to speed.

Though if we're talking specifically about heavy metals, iirc northeastern China has better (lower) heavy metal levels compared to a lot of other parts of China

Chinese would never agree with you. The best rice comes from the South. (I dont necessarily agree but it’s a strong stereotype that I often heard in my 6 years there).

There is an old Chinese saying that goes Live in Hangzhou, marry in Suzhou, dine in Guangzhou, and die in Luzhou.

My grandpa's side grew up in southern China, so that's what I originally thought.

But my wife is from way northeast, and I had to begrudgingly admit that I do like the rice from up there better.

I think Japanese rice in a decent Japanese rice cooker with millions of engineering hours poured into competently cooking Japanese rice consistently produces pretty great rice. Flavour / texture wise, I'd pick Thai rice cooked from stove top over it any day.

This calls out for a Triangle Test! There are a lot of Japanese where I live, and grocery stores that cater to them. It would be easy to test whether people really can tell the difference.

"It's the best-tasting rice in the world" is typical Japanese hyperbole in the same way they brag about having four seasons.

I'm sure it's excellent, but in the end, it's just rice. A blind taste test would be random noise. I sure can't remember there being a material different in the rice I ate in Japan vs good Japanese food in Cali.

Hell, even if you included jasmine or basmati, I'll bet most western people wouldn't even be able to tell those apart from Japanese short-grained rice.

Edit: western people

I mean, different kinds of rice do have clearly different textures, and basmati and jasmine are both aromatic in a way that koshikihari is not. I think people should be able to tell them apart easily (including just from "how easy is this to eat with chopsticks? could I imagine clumping this into the base of nigiri sushi? could I imagine this in a biryani?") but I think that's very different from deciding that one is better. To me your statement is like saying people cannot tell the difference a French baguette, focaccia and Japanese milk bread because "it's just bread". I think you wouldn't confuse them unless you were really distracted.

I agree with you and can tell, but I doubt most people around me could. They could understand each type of rice is different but wouldn't have a clue which is which.

It was a bit of hyperbole, but I think you'd be surprised how undifferentiated people's pallets can be if they aren't eating something constantly.

Please don't project your own opinions of a staple that people eat sometimes 3 meals a day onto others.

I'll beat your blind taste test everyday of the week just by rolling the rice around in my mouth

EDIT fwiw you can vaguely bucket 1.4 billion people into "eat basmati" 673M+1.4B people into "eat jasmine" and 150M+50M into "eat short grain" rice which is well over a third of the planet

I agree with you. I can tell them apart (Not Japanese vs. California rice, though).

I should have qualified that to randomly selected Americans/Europeans. And that they could understand each type of rice is different but wouldn't have a clue which is which.

I would enjoy a California be Japanese blind taste test. My mother in law has started buying Vietnamese-grown Japanese short grain - I think I can taste the difference but it could also be the cooking method

As a cash strapped student I would buy Korean short grain as it was cheaper

Yeah, the cooking method (and the water it's cooked in) has a much larger effect than the origin of the rice.

> it’s just rice

Tell that to my Japanese wife, LOL

We also buy the “Japanese” rice grown in California and she is never fully satisfied with it.

It’s like audiophiles if you’re convinced of something not amount of persuasion or facts change your mind.

>Luxury cars won't lose out to ordinary ones even if the price is higher.

meet Lexus LFA vs Corvette.

That's a really interesting comparison because the LFA is such a good car. But the Corvette has much more brand equity because its been what it is longer than most of its buyers have been alive. The LFA just wasn't around long enough to build broad awareness. A closer comparison is 911 vs Corvette. You can always charge more for a 911, both cars have a ton of brand loyalty. The 911 is the Japanese rice, the Corvette is the California rice :)

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