How It's Made: Rice
Vocab level: C1
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In many parts of the world, rice is the main grain.
In fact, it is a food staple for nearly half of the planet's population.
Native to Asia, it has been grown and consumed for thousands of years.
But today, machines do much of the harvesting and processing
in order to feed the enormous demand.
These perfectly formed kernels of rice are essentially a crop that has been allowed to go to seed.
After about 150 days of growth, the rice seed is ready for harvest.
Machinery strips it from the stalks and also suctions out some of the empty husks.
Trucks transport the rice to storage facilities.
They empty it into a grated opening at the receiving pit.
The grates filter out some of the larger stalks and debris.
From the pit, a chain conveyor moves the rice up to storage silos and into warehouses.
Inside the storage facilities, fans blow air through the mountain of rice
to lower the moisture content substantially.
With the rice sufficiently dried, it's on to the processing plant.
Here, a probe vacuums up samples from both the front and the back of the massive truckload.
The probe delivers the samples to a lab.
A technician first tests the moisture content to confirm that it's on target.
He then transfers batches to a sifting pan to screen for bugs.
He switches on a heat lamp to wake them up.
He shakes the rice and scrutinizes it.
He also examines the tray underneath for tiny bugs that may have fallen through the holes.
If he finds just one moth or beetle,
the entire 5500-pound truckload of rice will be rejected.
Next, the rice falls through perforations in rolling cylinders,
screening out the straw, which spills over the side.
The next machine sifts out the remaining straw bits and any weed seed.
It also suctions out empty rice husks.
They're lightweight and pulled out with a weak vacuum.
Finally, they remove mud balls.
Free of contaminants, the rice now spills between two rubber rollers,
one moving faster than the other.
This shears off the husks.
The rice and empty husks then cascade into another machine.
This is a demo version of the actual production one.
Weak suctioning pulls out the husks to separate them from the heavier rice.
The de-husking process misses a few kernels,
so next, giant sifting machines screen out that rice
Still in husks, it's bigger and doesn't pass through the holes in the shaking trays.
They de-husk that rice and mix it with the rest.
Grinding machines now mill the rice to remove the bran.
The bran spills out of perforations and is recovered for use in cattle feed.
With the bran removed, the rice goes from brown to white.
The final grinding polishes the rice to give it a pearly sheen.
This is the unmilled brown rice,
and here it is with the bran removed.
During milling, some rice kernels are damaged.
This spinning dimpled cylinder now separates the broken kernels from the whole ones.
The broken rice kernels fall into the dimples of the cylinder
and from there into an internal catch pan.
They'll be used to make cereal or beer.
The whole rice now moves through a color sorter.
Computerized cameras analyze it for dark imperfections
and signal air nozzles to blast them out of the mix.
Of course, there's also a market for unmilled brown rice.
Now ready for packaging,
a scraper moves it across a table and into plastic tubes below.
Hot jaws seal the tubes at both ends,
and this rice is in the bag.
Brown or white, short or medium grade,
there are plenty of options.
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