Rice

Ssal is the hulled grain of the rice plant, Oryza sativa. Botanists divide cultivated rice into japonica, javanica and indica types, and Korea grows almost entirely the japonica kind — a short, cold-tolerant plant with short, rounded grains that is also typical of Japan and northeastern China. Within japonica there are two kinds of starch behavior: ordinary non-glutinous rice (maepssal), whose starch is roughly one-fifth amylose, and glutinous rice (chapssal), which has almost none and turns sticky when cooked.

Rice reached the peninsula from the Chinese mainland, and carbonized grains about 3,000 years old from Heunam-ri in Yeoju and from the Pyongyang area show it was being grown in the Bronze Age, alongside millet, sorghum and barley. Paddy farming flourished in the warm, well-watered southern regions of Yeongnam and Honam; the Three Kingdoms of Baekje and Silla promoted it, and by Unified Silla rice had become the leading grain — so central to taxation that a native character for a paddy field, dap (畓), was coined. Even so, white rice long remained a food of the well-off. Through the Joseon period most farming families ate it only on holidays and ancestral rites, filling everyday bowls with barley and other grains.

The modern story is one of scarcity turning into surplus. Under Japanese colonial rule large quantities of Korean rice were shipped to Japan while per-capita consumption at home fell sharply. In the 1970s the high-yielding Tongil varieties lifted harvests enough for the country to become self-sufficient in rice for the first time, and the government, which had campaigned for mixing barley into rice, lifted its restrictions. As incomes rose, households returned to better-tasting ordinary japonica varieties, and per-capita rice consumption has declined steadily since around 1980.

Rice is graded by milling — from brown rice (hyeonmi) through partly milled grades to white rice — and sold by variety and region, with names such as Gyeonggi rice and Honam rice familiar to shoppers. Beyond bap, it is ground for rice cakes (tteok), brewed into makgeolli and other sul, simmered into juk, and the browned crust left in the pot becomes nurungji and the toasty drink sungnyung.

• An energy staple: White rice is mostly starch, providing the bulk of the energy in a traditional Korean meal, with modest protein and very little fat or sodium.
• Brown and mixed-grain rice keep more of the grain: The bran and germ removed in milling carry most of the B vitamins and fiber; brown rice and mixed-grain japgokbap retain more of them than polished white rice.
• Naturally gluten-free: The U.S. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases lists rice among the grains that are safe for people with celiac disease (watch for wheat in sauces and seasonings served with it).
• Arsenic and variety: Rice can take up arsenic from soil and water. The U.S. FDA advises eating a varied diet across grains rather than relying on rice alone, and notes that cooking rice in excess water and draining it lowers arsenic — along with some of its nutrients.