History
The Food That Built America Recap for Rice to Riches
This week’s episode of The Food That Built America on The History Channel is titled Rice to Riches and talks about how the popular side dish came to be.
Rice showed up in the Americas thanks to enslaved Africans and it soon became a popular crop and an export to Europe. However, Americans were rarely, if ever eating it themselves.
It becomes less popular in the 1920s but was used in jambalaya and various Chinese dishes.
Many people found rice to be difficult to cook. Atullah Khan Ozai-Durrani, an Afghan inventor, had a friend over for dinner and served rice. The friend loved it and suggested he sell it somehow. This plants an idea in Durrani’s mind to try and make rice easier and more convenient to cook.
In 1939, he decides to dehydrate the rice, thus inventing what we now know as Minute Instant Rice. It was cooked in a fraction of the time and just as delicious as fresh rice.
Durrani goes to General Foods to present his idea to the company. He demonstrates how to make it and has the head honchos try it, making quite an impression. They buy the patent for several million dollars.
However, it wasn’t put on the market until the Pearl Harbor attack and the USA entered WWII and sent to soldiers.
Forrest E. Mars, who had just entered M&Ms, which were also sent to the soldiers, decided he wanted in on the action…..across the pond in London. He meets with Erich Huzenlaub, a German inventor who wants to make his own fast cooking rice. He already has a plan to make parboiled rice that cooks in half the time and presents it to Forrest.
The rice is delicious, so the two men go into business together, coming out with Converted Rice Limited. They present it as a healthier version of the rice for the military and get a deal.
Together with Gordon Harwell in Texas, who works in the rice business, they make it all happen.
Once the war is over, General Foods stops instant rice production, but Mars continues on with it since they have a surplus of rice. Seeing the trend of modern technology and convenient foods, they decide to sell the rice to the public.
They rebrand as Uncle Ben’s and take the world of convenience food by storm AND make rice the center of dinner tables across the country.
Not to be outdone, General Foods decides to get back into the market and decide to release Minute Rice to the public.
It instantly becomes a hit and needless to say, Mars is not happy with this turn of events. However, he isn’t fond of Minute rice’s taste, so he decides to start an attack campaign against them to prove his product is better.
Both companies remain head-to-head in competition, but are not prepared for new competition in San Francisco, namely from the Golden Grain Macaroni Company, run by the DeDomenico brothers, Tom and Vince. They are looking for the next best thing in boxed foods and decide to invent something new.
It isn’t until Vince tries an Armenian rice pilaf dish mixed with pasta that he realizes he has a winning product on his hands. However, he needs to find a way to make it into a convenient product for the masses.
The brothers work on it together and soon come up with what we now know as Rice-a-Roni…..complete with the jingle we all know and love.
The product and jingle are immediate hits and allow the competition to come out with new variations of rice.
Uncle Ben’s rebranded as Ben’s Original in 2020.
The US eats 20 billion pounds of rice per year.
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