Being back in the burbs has its perks and undeniably one of them is having Costco around! I already love grocery shopping, but Costco ups the standard by offering a well-filtered selection of interesting and scrumptious supermarket goods.  This time the noteworthy discovery was… black rice!

White, brown, yellow, jasmine, arborio, sticky, long-grain, medium-grain, short-grain. I’ve tried lots of different rice over the years, but never had I heard of black rice (also called purple rice or forbidden rice). From a quick google search I learned that:

According to ancient Chinese legend, black rice was so rare, tasty, and nutritious that only the emperors were allowed to eat it…

only black-rice bran contains the antioxidants known as anthocyanins, purple and reddish pigments — also found in blueberries, grapes, and acai — that have been linked to a decreased risk of heart disease and cancer, improvements in memory, and other health benefits. – CNN.com

Sounded to me like the next up and coming superfood so in the cart it went. But not really knowing what to expect we decided to just follow the recipe on the back of the bag; it was Sesame Ginger Black Rice for dinner!

The verdict: black rice is distinctly different from the ubiquitous white rice in both texture and flavor, coarser and nuttier respectively. Personally, I don’t care much for brown rice yet a lot of people choose it nowadays as a healthier alternative. But perhaps soon black will become the new brown.