Black Rice from Kalinga Province
I got curious this morning at a specialty Kalinga Province representative products outlet and bought their black rice. Wow. I’ve never tasted black rice… ever. Nor have my family. So I bought. 150 pesos for 1 kilo. 5 times the price of regular white rice.
What is special about black rice is it is a traditional Kalinga provincial people’s only black rice. You would literally have to bribe them with a lot of money for them to sell this to you. Think of it as their personal riches.
This dinner the maids cooked 3 cups of the black rice grains. When cooked it seemed oily and sticky as if tainted by squid ink. I tasted 2 spoon fulls. Black rice tasted different… too different… different from brown, red or white rice. Black rice tasted as if it was smeared with a lot of special flavoring.
I saw one of our maids really liked this stuff. My daughter put a regular amount on her plate and found out that this black rice was very very heavy on the tummy. I’d guess a white rice eater would only need 1/3 to 1/2 the volume in black rice and be full immediately. I’m wondering what nutritious unique properties this black rice has.
This black rice should not be classified as a regular white, red or brown rice thing… it’s something else. Must ask Kalinga people how they use this for food.