Species sheet · The Edible River
Wild rice
A lake grass harvested by canoe.
- As a pilaf with mushrooms and onions
- In soup with poultry or squash
- Popped in a dry pan, like popcorn
- In French
- Riz sauvage
- Scientific name
- Zizania palustris
- In the water
- A tall aquatic grass rooted in the shallow water of lakes and slow rivers around the Great Lakes and across Canada, raising its seed heads above the surface.
- Season & buying
- Harvested in late summer; dried, it keeps all year and sits on grocery shelves, often blended with white rice.
- Common length
- ~150 cm
- How to identify it
- Tall stems rising from the water with long, supple leaves
Terminal seed head with slender brown to black grains
Roots in the mud, feet in the water
On the plate
Nutty, smoky-tea flavour with a firm, slightly chewy grain that stays whole.
Avoid: Cooking it like white rice: it needs far more water and time, and it is done when the grains split open like butterflies.
It is not a rice at all: the Anishinaabe, who call it manoomin, harvest it from canoes by knocking the seed heads with two wooden sticks.
In Umay recipes
3 Umay recipes call for it.
