Blanching is necessary to eat wild rice. The benefits of blanching are:
1. Remove residual pesticides: For some vegetables with high oxalic acid content, such as spinach, wild rice, and water spinach, use boiling water "Blanching" can prevent oxalic acid from being absorbed by the body and combining with calcium to form kidney stones.
2. Remove the spicy, bitter taste from some vegetables.
3. Kill the microorganisms attached to the surface, which not only makes it safer to eat, but also makes the color look better.
Extended information:
Morphological characteristics of wild rice:
Perennial, with creeping rhizomes. The fibrous roots are thick. The stalk is tall and upright, 1-2 meters high, about 1 cm in diameter, with many nodes and adventitious roots growing on the base nodes. The leaf sheath is longer than its internodes, thick and has small transverse veins; the ligule is membranous, about 1.4 cm long, with a pointed tip; the leaves are flat and wide, 50-90 cm long and 15-30 mm wide.
Panel inflorescence, 30-50 cm long, with mostly clustered branches, ascending, and unfolding in fruit stage; male spikelets 10-15 mm long, flattened on both sides, borne in the lower part of the inflorescence or among the branches The upper part is purple, the lemma has 5 veins, the apex is acuminate with a small tip, the lemma has 3 veins, the midvein is ridged, hairy, 6 stamens, and the anthers are 5-10 mm long.
The female spikelet is cylindrical, 18-25 mm long and 1.5-2 mm wide. It is attached to the upper part of the inflorescence and the lower part of the branch and adjacent to the main axis. The five veins of the lemma are rough and the awns are long. 20-30 mm, lemma with 3 veins. The caryopse is cylindrical, about 12 mm long, and the embryo is small, 1/8 of the fruit body.