Japanese Extremely Rare , Ultra Premium, Uonuma, Yuki Tsubaki Koshihikari White Rice, 魚沼産こしひかり特別栽培米「雪椿 11 Pound / 5Kg (1)

We have been traveling to Japan for several years and are big fans of the culture and cuisine. I have been preparing sushi rice at home for at least a decade always using premium Japanese brands when available. The incremental benefit in taste and texture in this brand are noticeable and definitely worth it to us. The extra cost per serving is not significant within this quality sector. If you truly appreciate the finest, this is it. If rice is merely a filler for your sushi or your hand roll then a ten cent saving per serving may be for you. We really appreciate excellence and are fortunate to be able to afford the extra few pennies per serving.

So I bought this rice out of curiosity and for entertainment the last time my extended family came to stay with us for a week. No doubt, it is good. This rice is noticeably different in color, texture, and taste (immediately out of the rice cooker anyway). It’s definitely better tasting than most when wrapped with Japanese seaweed. Once it sits in the rice cooker for an hour though, it started to taste about the same as our daily rice. Is this worth $100 a bag? Depend on if you enjoy blowing through your trust fund for staple grains — or if you’re like me and framed the onetime expense as an investment in culinary education. I’d probably never buy it again at this price point unless I’m having a themed dinner party or something (compare/contrast different types of rice?). But overall, my frugal family was unimpressed and thought the price point just ridiculous.

Worth every penny. I was always labeled an abnormal Asian because while I was ok with rice I didn’t LOVE rice. Until I discovered this rice and now I actually want to cook and eat rice! My family can’t believe it but after trying it have also been converted. I get it, it’s expensive but if you count the number of meals you get out of the one bag, don’t you owe that to your stomach to eat the best rice it can have? :)

I got a bunch of premium rices to try with my new rice cooker, and I'm honestly considering giving all of my rice away and sticking with this ridiculously expensive rice. It's that much better than the rest.

Perfection !!!! Well worth the extra money. Taste 5 stars, texture 5 stars, just water and a little salt made the perfect sticky rice in my Sakura rice cooker. Kids gave it the rating of best rice ever mom.

I am a rice connoisseur - I even have a mini milling machine and freshly mill brown rice into white rice right before cooking. Even compared to freshly milled rice, this Yukitsubaki is simply unmatched by any other koshihikari-type short grain rice that I have tried in the market. If you are looking for a lighter, less starchy rice (sasanishiki, etc.), this is probably not for you, but for those looking for a typical flavorful, firm and highly starchy varietal, this is the ultimate koshihikari rice. Is it pricey? Compared to other food and beverage items that we spend money on, this is the last thing anyone should save a few dollars on.

Rice had a perfume taste and could not eat.

I've been on a sushi, onigiri, and musubi making kick lately so I went down the rabbit hole of different Japanese grown short grain rices that claim to make a significant different to your end product. I grew up eating California grown medium grain rice-usually Kohuko yellow or rose. The ONE appliance that has always been present in every place I called home is a Tatung rice steamer. In fact it was usually the first appliance that got its place of honor on the countertop when unpacking in a new apartment or house. This rice came in a brown paper bag with a waxy inner lining. I kinda get the other reviewer who complained that the bag isn't sealed. The top of the bag is literally folded down several times and tied shut with a string. It doesn't quite meet modern day sealed packaging expectations, but it didn't freak me out as much since I'm used Asian foods historically being packaged more casually. My bag of rice had a milled date of 4/10/24, which made me frown a little that the $89 bag of boutique rice had been milled and sitting around for 5 months before I purchased it. The grains of rice were no longer that pure clear appearance they advertise. A lot of it had started to go milky white on the edges-a sign of age and drying out in my book. Also, interestingly enough the back of the paper bag has a label that says keep the rice refrigerated. Hmmm. I wondered if anyone bothered to do that including Amazon? Anyway at least the somewhat old bag of rice was bug and debris free. So I embarked on my usual short grain and medium grain rice ritual. I washed the rice three times till the water was mostly clear. Because some of the grains had gone milky, I actually went ahead and soaked the rice for about 30 minutes before firing up the Tatung. I cooked the rice with my standard ratio of 1 cup of water to 1 cup of rice with half a cup of water in the Tatung steamer reservoir. I let the rice continue to steam undisturbed for another 15 minutes after the indicator popped that the rice cooker had turned off. Then I fluffed the rice and sampled the end product straight up with no additives. The flavor of the rice is quite good-sweet and pleasant. The individual grains had a softer texture like I expected for a koshihikari type rice. Did it rock my world? No. Was it the best rice I've ever tasted in my life? No. Did it justify the $8/lb price? ABSOLUTELY NOT. In fact despite soaking the older, somewhat dried out rice, I still found some hard crunchy bits that didn't hydrate and cook throughout the entire sampling of rice. When the rice started cool to room temperature, I started detecting notes of Chinese herbal medicine like the rice had been living on a shelf for a long time close to a packet of mixed stewing herbs my mother like to throw into a pot with an old layer past her prime. So in summary, my impression is that this seems a decent and tasty variety of rice. It possibly would have been considerably better if I ate it within 2 weeks of its original milling date. However, I don't think there' s any way of guaranteeing you'll receive a reasonably fresh bag of rice. For my money, I'm buying Ubara or Yumepirika. I've gotten both of those varieties for between $3.5 to $4/lb on Amazon, and both varieties came to me far fresher than this bag of Uonuma. I had a much more enjoyable time eating Ubara or Yumepirika. I'm going to have to fire up induction heat rice cooker to see if it can do anything about improving the unevenly dehydrated portions of rice because I certainly don't want to waste overpriced $8/lb rice even if it tastes vaguely like Chinese herbal medicine.