Underground cured rice / Khani
· Khani, is a traditional technique of curing, seasoning and storing the Paddy, in the southern part of the Odisha, and mostly practiced in Ganjam District.
· Once the paddy is harvested it is left off in open space for 2 days. During which a suitable pit under a dry ground is made and lined with straws, to protect paddy from mud. Then the paddy is poured in the same mud which is dig out, is again covered over carefully whole throughout as shown in the above picture.
· The Khani once placed off and sealed is left off for next 5-6 months up to the first rain falls. Once the khani gets the water of first rain and gets a little wet, it is immediately opened and again the rice is stored in a safer place in proper shed storages to cure for another 5-6 months and get aged. And then it is hand pounded, hulled or milled for de-husking, for its journey to become rice.
· This is practiced to cure the rice with natural heat of the sun and with a pressure-cooking effect, as locked inside the soil. The heat inside the Khani, makes the paddy loose majority of its moisture content, and at the same time the bran and endosperm of the rice gets fused. In this process all the micro-nutrients in the rice gets fused with the endosperm and is locked inside.
· Usually in white rice these nutrients are removed off with the bran, for making it look whiter. This is the reason why parboiled rice is considered more nutritional. But why we prefer white rice over parboiled rice is because of its aroma, texture and taste, which is very much reduced in the parboiled rice.
· This Khani rice, can be pronounced as a Sophisticated Parboiled rice, which has all the property of parboiled rice, with fused and locked micro-nutrients, but has the taste, smell and looks property of similar to white rice. This makes the rice tastier and at the same time healthier. It is very similar to as mother Earth in her womb, again has nurtures the rice, it produced and developed it healthy for us to eat.
