Rice

Rice feeds more people than any other food on earth, and I've eaten it in most of the countries I've been lucky enough to visit — under a gumbo, packed into sushi, steamed sticky in a basket, crackling at the bottom of the pot. In my own kitchen it's Louisiana long-grain more often than not: jambalaya, dirty rice, red beans and rice, and a Zojirushi that quietly does the everyday work. But rice is much stranger and deeper than a side dish. It was domesticated twice, on two continents, thousands of years apart. One kind of "rice" isn't rice at all. And a single difference between two starch molecules decides whether your pot comes out fluffy or glued together. This is the whole thing: where it came from, the types, how it grows, the science, how to cook it, what the world does with it, and how to buy and keep it.