This Fluffy, American-Grown Rice Is Unlike Any Other — Here’s Why Chefs Love It

If you spend some time eating around Charleston, it won’t take long before you hear about Carolina Gold rice. The name comes from the seeds’ golden hue, a halo that glows from the top of the plant as it nears harvest time. Home cooks revere it and often speak of it as the only true canvas for dishes that express the spirit of Gullah Geechee cuisine. “My mother cooked rice every day, but not any kind of rice,” says Lavern Meggett, one of the daughters of Emily Meggett, the Lowcountry legend who achieved national fame in her 80s. “It was Carolina Gold. She kept a big container under the kitchen sink. This rice always comes out fluffy, and each grain just separates so well, making it a beautiful bowl of deliciousness.”

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Local restaurant chefs, too, hold Carolina Gold in high esteem. At Lowland, an elegant spot on George Street, chef Jason Stanhope likes to cook it with bay leaf and preserved lemon. “After it has rested, we fluff it with a little butter, and there’s nothing better,” Stanhope says. “Because it is long and fragile, it breaks when it is threshed. This yields middlins. The middlins are my favorite. They are little pearls that, for me, resemble the coveted Japanese short grain. Something happens when the grain is broken. It unlocks the full flavor potential.”

It would be an understatement to say that Carolina Gold is woven into the history of the city. True to its name, Carolina Gold made Charleston rich. Having originated in Asia, it appeared in South Carolina around the time of the Revolutionary War and expanded to become a dominant Lowcountry crop. It was so prevalent that there are even old recipes for rice birds — bobolinks that fattened up from feasting on Carolina Gold from the fields.

“After they had gorged, they were among the tastiest of all birds,” write David S. Shields and Kevin Mitchell in their book Taste the State: South Carolina’s Signature Foods, Recipes & Their Stories. “Whether baked in a pie or basted in butter and broiled on a spit, the rice bird was the delight of the autumn Charleston table.” The authors refer to Carolina Gold as the “most famous culinary ingredient ever produced in South Carolina.”

But it was produced through agony and exploitation. Growing Carolina Gold is difficult and expensive, and the rice boom in the state never could have occurred without slavery. In fact, commercial harvesting plunged after the Civil War and essentially came to a halt after hurricanes ravaged the fields in the 1910s. The dominant narrative holds that Carolina Gold “vanished” at that point, but that’s not true. Black and Indigenous families kept it alive for decades, especially on the islands that dot the Atlantic coastline. 

“Carolina Gold rice was still a staple in very off-the-grid Sea Island families as hand-plot rice until the early 1980s,” says Glenn Roberts, whose work with Anson Mills has helped to usher the seed back into the American marketplace in recent years. In his younger days, Roberts worked on a shrimp boat. The boat’s skipper, Junior Magwood, “would occasionally bring purloo from his Cape Romain farm and swore it was Carolina Gold from their island grower,” Roberts says. “The food was ethereal.”

Carolina Gold reentered the mainstream conversation in the 1980s when Richard Schulze, a Savannah ophthalmologist, began to grow it on the grounds of Turnbridge, a former South Carolina plantation that he had purchased. Today, the man who grows Carolina Gold on 47 acres of that same property is Rollen Chalmers, a farmer whose ancestors happened to be among the many Black families that continued to cultivate Carolina Gold privately for decades. It wasn’t trendy in those days. “Back then, every African American family had a small rice field,” Chalmers says. “That’s what they did to survive.” 

Where to buy Carolina Gold rice

Anson Mills

Founded in 1998 by Carolina Gold evangelist Glenn Roberts, Anson Mills is a trailblazing Columbia, South Carolina, company that also represents the gold standard (as it were) when it comes to resurrecting heirloom crops — not only Carolina Gold rice, but also buckwheat, benne, and Sea Island field peas.

Rollen’s Raw Grains

It doesn’t get closer to the source than this. Southwest of Charleston, Rollen Chalmers grows and harvests Carolina Gold rice on 47 acres of the former Turnbridge Plantation in South Carolina and sells it at his family-owned shop, Rollen’s Raw Grains, a few minutes down the road in Hardeeville.

Marsh Hen Mill

Greg Johnsman is one of the most celebrated millers in the American South. Grits, middlins, cornmeal, and Carolina Gold — every product from Marsh Hen Mill, located in the heart of one of South Carolina’s oldest Gullah Geechee communities on Edisto Island, is made with care and respect.

Carolina Gold Rice recipes

Lowcountry Crab Rice

30 mins

Chicken Bog

1 hr 10 mins

Shrimp-and-Pepper Pilau

1 hr

Hoppin' John with Turnips and Turnip Greens

7 hrs 15 mins

Smoky Shrimp Purloo

1 hr