Broken rice

Broken rice is fragments of rice grains, broken in the field, during drying, during transport, or during milling. Mechanical separators are used to separate the broken grains from the whole grains and sort them by size.

Broken rice is fragmented, not considered to be defective, and beside esthetics, it is equivalent to non-broken rice. It is as nutritious as the equivalent quantity of unbroken rice (i.e. if all the germ and bran remains, it is as nutritious as brown rice; if none remains, it is as nutritious as white rice).

Broken rice has a long history; Ibn Baṭṭūṭa mentions rice couscous in the area of Mali in 1350, presumably made of African rice.