Cooked Rice Emoji

A bowl of steamed white rice. 🍚 represents one of the most important foods in human civilization: rice feeds over 3.5 billion people daily and provides more dietary energy to humans worldwide than any other crop.

Approved in Unicode 6.0 (2010). Rice was domesticated in East Asia over 10,000 years ago and remains the foundation of cuisine across China, Japan, Korea, India, Southeast Asia, and much of Africa and Latin America. In Japanese culture, rice (gohan) is so central that the word for "cooked rice" is also the word for "meal": asagohan (breakfast), hirugohan (lunch), bangohan (dinner) literally mean "morning rice," "noon rice," "evening rice."

Online, 🍚 has a second life through the Rice Purity Test, a 100-question survey originally created at Rice University in 1924. The test measures how "pure" (inexperienced) someone is, with life experiences ranging from hand-holding to significantly more. It went viral on TikTok in 2020 and became a standard college icebreaker. "What's your rice purity score?" is now a common question among young adults.

Throwing rice at weddings traces to ancient Rome, where guests threw wheat or grain to wish the couple fertility and prosperity. Rice specifically became common in the Middle Ages.

Asian food culture. 🍚 is the default emoji for rice dishes, Asian cuisine, and home cooking. It represents the everyday meal rather than a special occasion.

Rice Purity Test. The Rice Purity Test went viral on TikTok in 2020. 🍚 sometimes appears in bios or posts referencing purity scores. "What's your 🍚 score?" is a coded reference to the test.

Cultural identity. For Asian and Asian-diaspora communities, 🍚 is a cultural marker. "Rice is life" is a real sentiment for billions of people. The emoji represents home, family meals, and cultural roots.

Wedding rice. 🍚 occasionally appears in wedding content, referencing the tradition of throwing rice at newlyweds for fertility and prosperity.

Diet / fitness content. Brown rice vs white rice debates, carb-heavy-day captions, "rice + protein + veg" meal-prep posts. 🍚🍗🥦 is the Monday-morning meal-prep combo.

Gohan memes. Dragon Ball fans use 🍚 for Son Gohan puns, since his name means "rice" in Japanese. It's a running gag in the anime subculture.

Rice domestication happened somewhere between 9,000 and 13,500 years ago in the Yangtze River valley in what's now China. Archaeological evidence places the first cultivated rice (Oryza sativa ssp. japonica) at sites like Shangshan and Kuahuqiao, making rice one of the oldest cultivated crops on earth, alongside wheat from the Fertile Crescent and maize from Mesoamerica.

From China, rice spread to Korea around 4,000 years ago, to Japan during the Yayoi period (around 300 BCE), and to Southeast Asia and India along trade routes. A separate subspecies (Oryza sativa ssp. indica) was domesticated in the Ganges plain and became the long-grain tradition of South Asia.

Rice reached Africa via Indian Ocean trade and was also independently domesticated in West Africa as Oryza glaberfima around 3,000 years ago. Rice arrived in the Americas with European colonization and the transatlantic slave trade: enslaved West Africans brought rice-growing knowledge to the Carolinas, where Carolina Gold rice became the foundation of Low Country cuisine.

In Japan, rice became a regular part of ordinary people's diets only during the Edo period (1603-1868). Before that, rice was a luxury crop used partly as currency, samurai were paid in koku (the amount of rice needed to feed one person for a year), and land values were measured in rice yield.

Approved in Unicode 6.0 (2010) as U+1F35AU+1F35A COOKED RICE. Added to Emoji 1.0 in 2015. Part of the Japanese food emoji set alongside 🍙 (Rice Ball), 🍘 (Rice Cracker), and 🍣 (Sushi).

In Japan, the word "gohan" (ご飯) means both "cooked rice" and "meal," reflecting how central rice is to Japanese identity. Japanese still call breakfast "asagohan" (morning rice) even when the meal is toast and coffee, the word persists regardless of what's on the plate.

In China, "have you eaten rice?" (你吃饭了吗?) is a common greeting equivalent to "how are you?", though the modern usage is colloquial, not literal. China consumes 192.8 million tonnes of rice annually, the most of any country.

In India, rice is offered to deities in Hindu ceremonies, used in weddings as an auspicious symbol, and forms the base of countless regional dishes (biryani, pongal, dosa batter, South Indian thali meals). India consumes 140.3 million tonnes annually, the second-highest volume globally.

In Myanmar, per-capita rice consumption is the world's highest at about 279 kg per person per year, roughly a kilogram every day-and-a-half. Indonesia follows at about 185 kg per person, Vietnam at 167 kg.

In West Africa, jollof rice is a national identity dish across Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, and Liberia. Each country claims the best version. The "Jollof Wars" between Nigerian and Ghanaian jollof partisans are a real, long-running Twitter phenomenon.

In the West, rice is one food among many. The emotional weight of 🍚 varies dramatically depending on whether rice is your cultural staple. A 🍚 post in Mumbai reads differently than a 🍚 post in Dublin.

• 🇯🇵 Japan: Short-grain gohan: Sticky Japonica rice, washed obsessively, cooked in a rice cooker with precise water ratios. The word for rice IS the word for meal. Eaten with every meal; koshihikari is the premium cultivar.
• 🇨🇳 China: Long-grain jasmine or Japonica: Varies by region, northern China eats less rice and more wheat (noodles, mantou). Southern China is rice country: plain white rice at every meal, plus congee (rice porridge) and fried rice.
• 🇮🇳 India: Long-grain basmati: Aromatic basmati dominates, with pulao, biryani, and plain rice served alongside dal and curry. Southern India also eats short-grain varieties for idli and dosa batter. Rice is offered to deities in Hindu ceremonies.
• 🇹🇭 Thailand: Jasmine rice (khao hom mali): Thailand is the world's second-largest rice exporter and jasmine rice is the national variety. Sticky rice (khao niao) dominates Laos-influenced northeastern Thailand.
• 🇮🇩 Indonesia & Philippines: Nasi: Rice is the literal base of meals. Nasi goreng (fried rice), nasi padang (rice with many sides), and sinangag (garlic rice) are daily staples. Indonesia consumes ~185 kg per person per year.
• 🇮🇷 Iran: Long-grain with tahdig: The prize is tahdig, the golden crispy rice crust at the bottom of the pot. Persian rice cookery is its own art form, with fluffy basmati never mushy or sticky.
• 🇪🇸 Spain: Short-grain Bomba or Calasparra: Paella requires a specific short-grain rice that absorbs up to three times its volume without turning mushy. Long-grain paella is considered a culinary offense.
• 🇺🇸 U.S. South: Carolina Gold: Rice came to the Carolinas with enslaved West Africans who brought rice-growing expertise. Carolina Gold became the foundation of Low Country cuisine, Hoppin' John, red rice, Charleston rice.
• 🇳🇬 West Africa: Jollof rice: The dish that triggers national identity debates. Nigerian, Ghanaian, Senegalese, and Liberian jollof each claim supremacy. "Jollof Wars" are a real, ongoing internet phenomenon.
• 🇮🇹 Italy: Arborio for risotto: Italy grows short-grain Arborio, Carnaroli, and Vialone Nano in the Po Valley. Risotto cooking technique is almost opposite to Asian rice: constant stirring and liquid addition.

• •Rice feeds over 3.5 billion people daily and provides more dietary energy to humans than any other crop, including wheat and corn. About 90% of world rice production comes from Asia.
• •Myanmar has the world's highest per-capita rice consumption at about 279 kg per person per year, roughly a kilogram every day-and-a-half. Indonesia follows at about 185 kg, Vietnam at 167 kg, Bangladesh at 160 kg.
• •In Japanese, "gohan" (ご飯) means both "cooked rice" and "meal." Japanese still say "asagohan" (morning rice) even when breakfast is toast, because the language treats rice as the grammatical synonym for eating.
• •The Rice Purity Test was created at Rice University in 1924, originally as a women-only questionnaire. It went viral on TikTok in 2020 with millions of people sharing their scores. Higher score = more "pure" (fewer experiences). College freshmen still take it as an icebreaker.
• •The ancient Roman tradition of throwing grain at weddings predates rice specifically. Romans threw wheat to honor Ceres, goddess of agriculture and fertility. Rice became common in the Middle Ages because it was cheap and available in the Mediterranean.
• •China and India together account for roughly 50% of global rice consumption: 192.8 and 140.3 million tonnes respectively in 2025. Indonesia is a distant third at 51.8 million tonnes.
• •Edo-period Japan measured land values and samurai salaries in koku, the volume of rice needed to feed one person for a year, about 180 kilograms. The Tokugawa shogunate ran on rice-denominated finance, not silver or gold.
• •Rice was domesticated over 10,000 years ago in the Yangtze River valley in what's now China. It spread to Japan during the Yayoi period around 300 BCE, and to West Africa as an independently domesticated species (Oryza glaberrima) about 3,000 years ago.
• •The Son Gohan character in Dragon Ball is named after rice. Akira Toriyama chose food-themed names across the saga, Goku's extended family includes Gohan (rice), Goten (sky), Pan (bread, her name also being Spanish for "bread"), and of course Bulma (underwear). Vegeta's family is named after vegetables.
• •Jollof rice triggers some of the internet's most durable food debates. The "Jollof Wars" between Nigerian and Ghanaian partisans have spawned countless Twitter threads, dedicated hashtags, and at least one diplomatic cold front. Senegalese and Liberian jollof partisans occasionally remind everyone they invented the dish first.

• •🍚 is U+1F35AU+1F35A. Common shortcodes: :rice::rice: (Slack, Discord, GitHub).

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