Rice and Flours
Kalu Heenati Rice
A dark red heirloom paddy with a deep nutty taste, grown in Sri Lanka for centuries.
- A traditional Sri Lankan paddy, not a modern hybrid
- Unpolished, so the bran and the colour stay on
- Deep nutty taste and a firm chew
- Grown by smallholders keeping old varieties alive
- Needs more water and more time than white rice
Available to pre-orderSKU: CC-RCE-KLH
Size: 1kg
- Carefully packed and shipped to your door
- 14-day replacement on damaged items
- Secure checkout
Description
Kalu heenati is one of the island's traditional red paddies, dark-husked, unpolished and slow-growing. The grain is small, the colour runs deep reddish-brown, and the taste is properly nutty. It cooks longer than modern rice and it repays the wait with a chew that white rice cannot give you.
Sri Lanka once grew thousands of traditional rice varieties, each bred over generations for a particular soil, season or use. Most of them disappeared when high-yield modern varieties took the fields in the last century.
Kalu heenati is one of the survivors, kept going by smallholders and by a slow revival of traditional paddy. Kalu means black, and the husk is close to it, though the milled grain reads dark red.
It is not a substitute for your weekday rice, and treating it that way leads to disappointment. It takes longer, drinks more water and tastes strongly of itself. Cook it as its own thing, with a plain dhal and a mallum, and it makes complete sense.
How to Use
- Cook plainly and serve with dhal and a mallum
- Soak for an hour first to cut the cooking time
- Use in a kola kenda porridge
- Serve with a strong fish curry that can match it
Cook with It
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Frequently Asked
Yield. Traditional paddies produce a fraction of what modern high-yield varieties do, they take longer in the field, and they are grown by smallholders in small lots. The price is what keeps those varieties in cultivation at all.
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