Would you pay $155 for 840g of 'the world's most expensive rice'?
Fancy trying “the world’s most expensive rice”? From 1 November, Singapore will be the first country outside of Japan to have access to the high quality Kinmemai Premium.
The premium rice will be sold in a sleek black box of six sachets (each contains 140g of rice), and will cost $155. Unfortunately, it will only be available for purchase from Kinmemai’s website.
Launched in 2016 by the Toyo Rice Corporation, Kinmemai Premium was awarded the title of ‘World’s Most Expensive Rice’ by Guinness World Records for costing US$109 (11,304 yen) per kilogram. How is that for an alternative gift idea?
Why is it so expensive? What is the difference between it and ‘normal’ rice?
According to Toyo Rice Corporation, Kinmemai Premium contains five types of award-winning grains sourced from rice producers in different prefectures in Japan, such as Gunma, Gifu, Kumamoto, Nagana and Niigata. These grains are purchased from producers at eight times their usual prices, and are then aged for half a year at their warehouse in Wakayama.
After the ageing, they are milled using Toyo’s ‘patented rice processing technology’, where the benefits of the rice germ are supposedly retained, and sent out to customers who order from their website.
According to Toyo’s head of business development, Chikako Yamawaki, it takes more than half a year to prepare the rice, which is available in “very limited amounts” and not available for bulk purchases by F&B establishments.
Dubbed as a ‘rinse-free gourmet rice’, customers are advised to simply soak the rice for 60 minutes before cooking it in a rice cooker.
Compared to conventional white rice, the Kinmemai Premium is said to be superior in terms of flavour, sweetness, nutritious value, and contains six times the amount of lipopolysaccharides (LPS), a natural booster for the immune system.
After Singapore, the premium rice will make its next overseas appearances in Hong Kong and the US. However, specific release dates have not been announced.
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