I love rice, but it wasn't an essential part of my plate until I began dating a South American! He's a rice addict. No matter what I cook for dinner, I know he'll love it as long as there's a side of rice. He even puts jasmine rice into his tom kha soup in approximately a 2:1 ratio!

I'm Irish (by birth, although apparently not by culinary preference), and most Irish people are obsessed with potatoes. My mother refuses to have a main meal without them. I've seen her eat pizza or pasta with a side of boiled potatoes. I don't understand it at all!

I don't think rice is absolutely necessary for a meal, but I do think there are few smells more comforting than the starchy waft from the rice cooker.

Definitely a rice lover here, growing up in Mumbai in a Parsi house~hold. I feel like I could have 2 portions of rice with my meals but when I switch to pita, I can't eat a lot of it. It's weird and I'm not sure if anyone else shares the same experience (?).

I like rice a lot but I'm Ok without having it with every meal but I didn't grow up in Asia so that might be part of it. I see lots of American's shy away from it as they focus on low carbs- high protein diets. They're missing out!.

As long as I have some leftover rice, a bit of cooked meat and some cooked vegetables in the refrigerator, I know I have lunch. It takes a few minutes from my busy morning to throw these ingredients in a microwavable container and I'm good to go! Economical, filling and nutritious--my Filipino mom would approve.

I am from Southern India and rice is a staple for almost all meals!! All big festival feasts have rice as main course. People are eating a bit more wheat now than earlier.. But rice still rules there!!

No. I grew up in Texas with parents from Ohio, and rice was a rarity on our table. We also didn't often eat bread with dinner. The starch of choice was potatoes, usually mashed.

Growing up in an Indian household has made me a rice addict. While I don't see it as a necessary part of American meals, it's a must with an Indian meal!

For my Venezuelan boyfriend, the craving is for corn flour-based starches - cachapas (corn pancakes) tortillas, tortilla chips, arepas (griddled corncakes), corn porridge/polenta/grits. The man is never happier than when cooking with Harina PAN. :)

Depends. Rice can be an integral component of, say, a Chinese or an Iranian meal. It doesn't always go with every type of food, though. My French in-laws insist on having bread with everything, even with a Chinese meal. It's just what people are used to. But, no, you don't need rice to make a meal (and I grew up eating rice most days).

My mother is Italian and we always had to have bread with every meal. My Dad grew up in the South and that meant we had to have iced tea with every meal - no matter how hot or cold it was outside. I love all carbs and when I am deciding what to eat, I almost always start with the carb and build the meal around that.

I eat brown rice with most bean dishes to make a complete protein. Dal, black bean burrito bowls, falafel, even French lentil salad... always with rice.

Only about 1/2 a cup or so, though... more than that and my stomach gets mad at me.

My dear Spanish friends say often that it's not a meal without good, crusty bread. :)

I ate rice 3 times a day, growing in a Korean household. The role of rice in the culinary culture is shockingly stronger in Afghanistan than Asian, though. http://7th-taste.com/2012/05/21/mushroom-chicken-pilau/

My south Louisiana family grew up eating Cajun popcorn rice with almost every meal. A basic meal in our house was chicken or beef, a side of rice and gravy, a canned or frozen veggie and a glass of milk.

My dad would special order 50 lbs of Cajun popcorn rice, specifically http://shopping.nosoc.com/ellisstanselstwopoundgourmetricewillnotshipduringsummermonths.aspx">Ellis Stansel's gourmet popcorn rice from Gueydan, LA. It is amazing, with a nutty, basmati-like flavor. It smells like popcorn when you lift the lid (and even more so if you burn it) and comes out fluffy.

Funnily, a friend who also grew up in south Louisiana, but in a Hungarian, not French, family, ate potatoes with every meal. We playfully bicker about which is better.

My south Louisiana family grew up eating Cajun popcorn rice with almost every meal. A basic meal in our house was chicken or beef, a side of rice and gravy, a canned or frozen veggie and a glass of milk.
--Corrected link--

My dad would special order 50 lbs of Cajun popcorn rice, specifically Ellis Stansel's gourmet popcorn rice from Gueydan, LA. It is amazing, with a nutty, basmati-like flavor. It smells like popcorn when you lift the lid (and even more so if you burn it) and comes out fluffy.

Funnily, a friend who also grew up in south Louisiana, but in a Hungarian, not French, family, ate potatoes with every meal. We playfully bicker about which is better.

I grew up eating pilaf (a Middle Eastern style cooked in chicken broth with broken vermicelli) very, very frequently, although not with every single meal. I always felt like it was a bland, boring side dish usually eaten next to bland, boring main courses like grilled chicken, so I never, ever make it now!

Plain white or brown rice with a saucy, interesting, well spiced main course is another thing entirely, and I'm glad trying other styles of cooking has turned me on to rice. I'm not of the "I grew up with it, therefore it makes meals complete" persuasion though - more of the "thank goodness I'm an adult and don't have to eat what I grew up with anymore" school of thought. No more pilaf or grilled chicken for me, thanks.

as most Italians, bread is the 'must' (aside when you are eating pizza, that's it). Of course we eat pasta (a lot of it) and rice (risotto or just boiled) but NEVER as a side dishes, they are 'first courses' (primi) like soups are.
... but since I live in the Czech Republic, I also started using white long grain rice as side of vegetables and eggs or meat and I like it very much. But I still eat lot of bread, Czech bread which is even better than Italian bread :)

@7th Taste: I think that for Afghans, like Persians, the QUALITY of the rice, and the skill with which it is prepared is extremely important. Rice is not just rice - there are stringent criteria for good rice!

I can't even tell you the last time I had rice. For me, I must have a fresh loaf of bread at all times - that's my carb of choice.

Rice is definitely a comfort food for me since I grew up with a Filipino grandmother. Chili with rice, stir-fry and rice, rice and eggs, rice w/sliced meat, the combinations are endless!

I'm Northern Italian, and we eat a lot of rice (arborio), but not at every meal. My husband is Japanese, and yes, rice makes it for him. The way I feel about waking up and there's no coffee--that's how he feels about waking up to no rice.

I'm with @PearMelon. Rice is an absolute must for Chinese, Indian, or Mexican. I love a heaping pile of jasmine or basmati rice to scoop up the delicious sauces and spices. For Italian though, you need good bread. For some classic, simple dishes like roast chicken or beef, potatoes are the way to go.

I love that so many cuisines and ethnicities have their own "carb." Makes life more interesting!

I love rice but I avoid serving it at every meal because of it's affect on blood sugar.

Recently my boyfriend (Cuban-America) and I (Cuban & Filipino American) recently had our small rice cooked break. Oh the rage that ensued us both. We had both grown up with rice and rice cookers in our universe that we NEVER had a moment to recall one breaking on us! Also my boyfriend comes from a majority Hispanic community and was blown away by the fact that not everyone owns a rice cooker.

I'm always the fullest when I have a bowl of white rice with a meal. Though, after moving away from my parents (where every meal was a rice cooker with 3.5 cups of rice!), I've learned to embrace different grains.

That being said, a bowl of white rice with a sunny-side egg, a piece of spam and a bit of sweetened soy sauce is the best comfort food this girl can ask for.

I don't find it necessary, but it does remind me of the obligatory bread rolls we had for dinner growing up. Midwest!

Grew up in Asia! While I don't find it necessary to have rice (or any other carb heavy staple) at every meal, it does make it on to the dinner table at least half the time. =D

The little town I grew up in got its start in the 1600s as a rice producer. Rice is definitely an important part of most meals in the South. I, personally, like to have some sort of bread with my meals.

Rice is nice but Europeans need their bread!

I'm from North Carolina, have no one of any Asian descent in my family, and I am happily turning into a rice snob. The first time I tried rice from a rice cooker (not the instant variety), I fell in love. I don't cook rice very often (but I don't cook very often anyway, something I'm working to change), but there's something so amazing about freshly cooked rice to complete most meals. And jasmine rice makes me want to just stand there and smell it for hours.

My brother was an extremely picky eater growing up, and rice was one thing you could always count on him eating, so we quite often had rice with dinner, nearly every night. Not quite as much anymore, now that I'm an adult, but I still love having rice. I can eat rice as a meal by itself, almost, it is so comforting and perfectly bland. But some carbs are necessary at every meal, whether it is rice, bread, or potatoes.

Growing up, making steamed rice for dinner was my daily chore! It always brings me comfort knowing that there's some in the house--in my early 20s I spent a year living in a studio without a rice cooker, and could never figure out why I always felt unsettled about dinner. I think I was just always missing the rice! And... let's be honest, I probably spent most of that year hung over.

For me thats very strange, I eat very little rice. Some people in Switzerland are like this with bread though.

My SO grew up with japanese sticky rice as a side for every dinner. My mom occasionally would add Rice-A-Roni (usually pilaf or the chicken flavor) as a side dish. Now, I'm trying to stay away from carbs / starches but I feel like a lot of meals still need something to bulk them up, so I use shirataki noodles instead. Super low calories, almost no effective carbs and they definitely fill you up.

I have to admit though, sometimes rice is just so comforting, especially sticky rice - sticks right to your ribs!

As a little girl growing up in NYC my mother cooked rice for our staple starch. We're not Asian, but my grandfather was from South Carolina, and she was raised with rice instead of potatoes. There's nothing quite like Southern fried chicken with cream gravy and rice...

We've recently started cooking more brown rice, but every now and then nothing but a dish of hot, fluffy white rice will do. It's my "feel better" food when I'm not feeling well too.

I see rice as being about as far ass essential to a meal as is possible to be. Unless I'm eating sushi or risotto, I see no real reason to eat rice rather than a vegetable or something.

My family is Finnish, so generally speaking potatoes were the reigning carb. My grandfather doesn't consider a day complete if he hasn't eaten a potato. Finns do eat some rice though, usually a shorter grain rice cooked down into a semi-risotto, pudding-ish state with a bunch of butter and salt. I grew up eating that maybe once a week/every 2 weeks, and I liked it well enough.

I live with my boyfriend now, and he has a rice cooker.
1. I didn't know such things existed (Finnish-style rice...you just boil it in a pot?)
2. I didn't know I could love a kitchen appliance as much as I love the cooker.

A bad day is no longer quite as bad when you get home and the place smells like perfect jasmine rice....along with some amazing curry to put on top!

I don't know what it is about rice and its effect on my blood sugar levels, but it unleashes a ravenous appetite for carbs that is hard to satisfy. Once I start eating it, I end up craving huge amounts of rice. It makes no difference whether the rice is brown, white, basmati, long grain, medium grain, or short grain. No other carb has this effect on me. Not potatoes, not pasta, not bread. Does anyone else have this reaction?

While rice might be the standard in Asia (and many other parts of the world), I think the traditional American staple starch has always been potatoes ("meat and potatoes" anyone?)

For Asian dishes, yes, I usually make rice, but I find this question kind of silly since there are SO many things that rice distinctly does not go with. Carbonara with a side of rice? Corned beef and cabbage ... and rice? Turkey sandwich with rice? While a starch balances the meal, rice isn't always the right starch.

Hmm, I never grew up with starches as a main component to a meal. My family is British and French. I love rice, bread, potatoes, and pasta all equally (I hate corn though), but it seems like my family has always snacked on our carbs. Nothing better than a plain slice of French bread with jam or nutella or scones with cream and jam.

From a Vietnamese-American family, our version of a complete dinner has rice, a main protein dish, a vegetable dish and a soup.
Even when it was "steak and potatoes night" we had a rice cooker on the side.
When I traveled to Vietnam, I saw that cooking intensely flavored, salty, pungent food with lots of rice was a way to extend small cuts of meat over many mouths and many meals. It was impossible to eat a bite of ca kho without a mouthful of white rice!

OMG. I know lots of people who don't think it's a complete meal without rice. I have a cousin who wouldn't feel full without rice. Once my mom served carbonara for dinner and he still had to have rice on the side, even just a little bit. Some people I know swear that pasta is not a dinner dish but a snack dish.

@Akay:Ha ha ha.

How about burger with rice? Fish and chips? Lasagne? Dim Sum?

As someone who grew up in the Philippines, rice was in most of my meals. There's even a few breakfast dishes revolving around rice and eggs that ends with -silog. -Si meaning sinangag is the fried rice part, while the -log stood for the fried egg part. Tocilog (tocino and rice), longsilog (longonisa and rice), tapsilog (tapa and rice), etc... The list goes on depending on the stuff that goes with the egg and rice.

And actually @akay, my Filipino mom would always make corned beef, cabbage, and potatoes with rice. Totally unnecessary, it felt right and comforting to us. My fiance (American with European roots) actually doesn't mind eating corned beef and cabbage with rice.

And pearlmelon, ever heard of a loco moco? It's rice with burger patty topped with gravy and an egg.

I lived in Madagascar for a year in the Peace Corps where a meal is actually a plate of rice. So I was pleasantly surprised to find so much of it on my next adventure to Ecuador! I married a man from Ecuador, who believes it isn't truly a meal if he doesn't have half of his plate filled with rice. I oblige him, but find without so much activity in my life as I had in Madagascar and Ecuador, I can't afford the calories!

I am from Hong Kong, and while my parents swear by rice, I hardly touch that stuff!

When we had rice as a child it was of the hideous Minute Rice variety. I love good rice of any type now and my kids are overjoyed when we eat out to have a bowl of plain white. At home though we only cook various brown rices for health reasons.

RICE!

I often see having bread only or potates only (no rice) with my meal as something 'unusual' that I do for a change every so often :)

Rice was with most meals growing up in a Chinese-American household. Now my mom always asks me if I made rice for dinner, and I'm always explaining how I don't eat rice for all my meals :) But I probably make rice atleast once or twice a week.

My mom came from the Philippines, and not one meal was without white rice (usually jasmine). The rice cooker was perpetually on and new batch was made before we got through the last. Someone above mentioned it...even if mom made an American dish like meatloaf or corned beef with potatoes, we still ate rice! Carb overload! Breakfast meant fried rice (yesterday's batch) was lurking somewhere. My brother and uncle would often crack raw egg over a GIANT plate of steaming white rice. Rice was EVERYWHERE.

When I moved out on my own, white rice became nearly nonexistent when cooking at home...brown rice, quinoa, and all those other lovely complex carbs are my go-tos now. The only time I made it was when I'd occasionally make adobo or sinigang. I've tried brown rice with the filipino dishes, which is just "ok". It's just not the same!