Hand-harvested wild rice

Over in the Fry Bread thread, David Hammond inquired about Native American foods typical of the Great Lakes region. One from Minnesota and Wisconsin is so-called "wild rice", which actually isn't related to rice at all. It was and is a mainstay of the diet and culture of the Menominee, whose name is based on the word for wild rice, and the Ojibwa (Chippewa). Wild rice grows in the shallows of lakes in Minnesota and Wisconsin and is harvested by hand from canoes. As the stalks are bent over and the grains of rice beaten into the canoe, enough rice falls back into the lake to grow again the next season.

Wild rice has also become a favorite of non-Indians in the region: my mom, a Minneapolis native, always made wild rice stuffing for the Thanksgiving turkey when I was growing up. Back then we were able to buy traditionally-harvested wild rice at Lund's supermarket in Minneapolis, when we visited relatives up there.

Now it's easier to find wild rice in stores all over, but unfortunately what's available is a relatively recent development, "cultivated wild rice," grown commercially primarily in California. Don't be fooled by the packaging showing Indians paddling. That rice has never been near a canoe. The cultivated variety is dark black and shiny, takes much longer to cook, and never reaches the tenderness possible with the traditional wild rice.

According to an article by Robb Walsh in Natural History (Sept. 98 ), the commercial variety was bred to permit harvesting by machine, so varieties with tough seed coats are selected for. In contrast to the traditional methods of threshing used by the Indians, which gets rid of the dark outer seed coat, the commercial wild rice growers have found that consumers prefer as dark a color as possible, especially in "wild rice blends," so the commercial companies leave the black seed coat on.

My mom and I have given up buying that shiny dark commercial wild rice. For a while, we relied on getting some Indian wild rice through my aunt and uncle, who spend much of the summer up near Cass Lake, Minnesota. Then their source up there started taking phone orders. Now they have a website! A pound of their wild rice costs $8; the website also has a few recipes.

Scenic Waters Wild Rice Company
HCR-3
Box 126
BlackDuck, MN 56630
www.scenicwaters.com

And here's another source:

White Earth Land Recovery Project
32033 E. Round Lake Rd.
Ponsford, MN 56575
www.welrp.org/nativeharvest/itemwildrice.html

More recipes can be found here:
www.nativepeoples.com/np_features/np_re ... ecipe.html

Amata wrote:According to an article by Robb Walsh in Natural History (Sept. 98 ), the commercial variety was bred to permit harvesting by machine, so varieties with tough seed coats are selected for. In contrast to the traditional methods of threshing used by the Indians, which gets rid of the dark outer seed coat, the commercial wild rice growers have found that consumers prefer as dark a color as possible, especially in "wild rice blends," so the commercial companies leave the black seed coat on.

Amata,

I'm not sure I would recognize "wild rice" without the black seed coat, and I must admit, I do like the nutty flavor and toothsomeness of the dark outer covering.

Hammond

Amata,

I'm a little late to the party as I'm just reading Rob Walsh's Are you really going to eat that? which contains the wild rice article you mention. But I agree 100%, the flavor and texture of hand harvested is worlds beyond commercial wild rice.

I'm lucky in the fact that my neighbor goes fishing in Canada every year and brings me back 4-5 pounds of hand harvested wild rice.

What a difference in texture and flavor from commercial wild rice, night and day. In fact, I just made a batch of commercial wild rice last week, not bad, but I simmered it in copious amounts of water, I use the simmer/drain method, and it never became tender.

The commercial wild rice was still quite edible, I simmer the rice with dried cranberries and add freshly slivered/butter toasted almonds just before serving, but nothing like hand harvested from Canada.

Thanks for posting links to places to purchase hand harvested wild rice, I plan on placing an order.

For those who have not read Rob Walsh's Are you really going to eat that? I highly suggest picking up a copy, very enjoyable reading.

Enjoy,
Gary

Gary, thanks for the testimonial. I didn't realize that article by Robb Walsh was available now in a collection. My mom had sent me that article from Natural History years ago, which I stuck in an envelope full of food-related stuff, and I only ran across it Thursday morning looking for the cranberry sauce recipe.

David, the hand-harvested wild rice is kind of a medium brown. Here are two images for comparison:

Click here for a picture of black wild rice
http://www.ranchogordo.com/html/v_herbs_grain.htm

click here for a picture of the wild rice available from Scenic Waters
http://www.scenicwaters.com/images/RicePackage.JPG