New-Crop Rice

new-crop rice After harvest or parboiling, rice is dried so that it has no more than 14 percent moisture. Even though the grain has been dried (by machine or the sun), it can and does dry still more in the first months after harvest. New-crop rice is rice that has been harvested fairly recently. It tends to have a slightly higher moisture content (so it requires a little less water when cooked by the absorption technique) and it is a little more fragile than older rice. Those who like their rice very soft and perhaps even a little sticky prefer new-crop rice; those of us who don’t make sure that the bags of rice we buy in the post-harvest months (November through February) are not marked “new-crop rice.”