RICE?! UK grown long grain rice? ⁣
⁣
Well, no...* This is another incredible cereal that grows beautifully in the UK, replaces long grain rice, tastes better and is extraordinarily nutritious. This is RICE OF THE NORTH!⁣

Better known, at the moment , as NAKED OATS. So called because unlike more usual oats the inedible husk that protects the groat falls off at harvest, meaning they require minimal processing and are perfect for small scale grain systems

Run of the mill oats are liable to be damaged by quite an aggressive de-hulling process & so have to be heat treated to denature oils in the grains that would otherwise become rancid when exposed to air. Naked oats retain all those quality oils & the flavour that comes with them

⁣Naked oats were eaten in preference to hulled oats for millennia and are still enjoyed all over the world - especially in Scandinavia. But because hulled oats make a single balanced ration for horses (who, unlike us, need and can digest the chaff) naked oats largely disappeared

⁣Horses are no longer a ubiquitous part of our lives, but naked oats haven’t made a come-back because they are badly suited to industrial food systems; they need to be stored and handled carefully and in small quantities to avoid damage to the grains.⁣

We hope all that’s about to change and that naked oats will be back on our plates and in our fields! The Turners at Little Bytham are growing a few acres of this delicious, nutritious crop organically and we already have a little non-organic available on our website. ⁣

It’s incredible exciting for us, we’ve effectively been waiting for this harvest for almost 5 years, but securing naked oat seed has proved incredibly complicated and difficult; naked oats are already grown in the UK but exclusively for high-end animal feed...

*We have, of course, tried to grow rice but with little success. @col_gordon & others seem to be getting better results in Scotland(?!) than we had in Suffolk.