A Method to Check Rice for Passover, with Jay Stanton

This post was developed in collaboration with Jay Stanton. Thank you Jay!

Happy Passover! Some of you may choose to eat rice for Passover – and if you, like me, are Ashkenazi, it may be your very first time. One requirement for many people on Passover is that all kitniyot – roughly, wheat-like foods – must be checked to ensure that they don’t contain chametz – one of the forbidden grains. Rice, with its small grains, is particularly hard to check.

My friend Jay Stanton was kind enough to teach me an efficient and fun way to check rice for chametz. Sharing is caring, so I will show you here. Many, many thanks to Jay Stanton for his assistance.

What you will need: a baking tray, parchment paper, an unopened package of rice, a place to store checked rice.

First, make sure that your space is well lit, and that you have a flat surface, and a comfortable place to sit. Your rice should be unopened for kashrut reasons. Make sure your hands are dry.

Choose a baking tray that has a lip. This will be helpful for making sure you do not lose rice.

Lay a layer of parchment paper over the baking tray.

Now, pour a handful of rice onto the parchment paper. Shake the tray so that the rice is in a layer that is one grain thick.

Scan the rice pile and start picking out anything that does not look like a grain of rice. In the United States, you are unlikely to find chametz, but you will find other things. For example, we found: some rice husks, some rice grains that had been damaged and discolored, and some tiny stones. If it does not look like rice, take it out and discard it. (Or feed it to a bird.) You

You may need to shake the tray a few times to spot everything.

Once you have taken everything you can see, use your finger to scan the edges to find any other impurities.

Once you are done with that, use the parchment paper and pour your rice into a sealable container or bag. Congrats! That is your first Passover rice.

Repeat the process until all rice is checked. This process also works for other small kitniyot.

A few notes:

• Some people have the custom of checking a batch three separate times. You can decide whether or not to do this yourself.
• If you keep a strictly kosher or kosher for Passover kitchen, you need to do this process before Passover.
• Be mindful that where you live and the type of rice you buy will affect what ends up in your rice.