Wild Rice

One US cup of wild rice weighs between 160 and 180 grams, depending on how the cup is filled and which source measured it. That range is the answer; a single number would not be. Every figure behind it is below, with the method each source used.

Also called wild rice, raw wild rice, uncooked wild rice, minnesota wild rice, cultivated wild rice, zizania palustris, zizania aquatica, north american wild rice.

TL;DR: Wild rice runs 160 grams per cup by USDA physical measurement but 180 grams per cup on producer nutrition labels; the 12.5% gap reflects a genuine methodology split between USDA's laboratory loose-fill anchor and the FDA reference-amount convention brands use for whole-grain serving sizes, not measurement error.

Wild rice is not a true rice but the seed of the aquatic grass Zizania palustris (northern wild rice, native to the Great Lakes region) or Zizania aquatica. The seeds are long, dark, and needle-shaped — grain lengths of 12-20 mm with cross-sections of only 2-3 mm, an extreme aspect ratio that produces more inter-grain void space than any other rice-family grain. Modern commercial wild rice is nearly all paddy-cultivated in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and California, though a small share is still hand-harvested from natural lake stands.

USDA Standard Reference for raw wild rice (FDC 169726) lists 160 grams per US cup, a direct physical measurement from long-standing USDA nutrient laboratory methodology using loose-fill leveled cup measurement. The figure fits the physical prediction: extreme grain-length-to-diameter ratio produces high void fraction when the grains stack randomly in a cup, and wild rice has very low moisture (~8% by mass, lower than any other rice) which further reduces mass per volume. Both effects push the density down.

Producer nutrition labels converge tightly at 180 grams per US cup — 45 grams per 1/4 cup dry serving. Whole Foods 365, Gourmet House, and Gibbs all publish exactly 45 g per 1/4 cup. This apparent convergence, however, is not independent measurement. The FDA-defined Reference Amount Customarily Consumed (RACC) for "Grains, dry, uncooked" per 21 CFR 101.12 is 45 grams, and brands universally list this RACC-derived figure paired with the "1/4 cup" household equivalent even when the physical measurement of one quarter cup might weigh somewhat less. When several brands publish identical serving weights of 45 g / (1/4 cup), the shared number often reflects the shared regulatory convention rather than independent physical measurements arriving at the same result.

The 12.5% gap between USDA's 160 and the producer 180 is best understood as a methodology gap. USDA measures loose-fill leveled cup weight in laboratory conditions. Producer labels report FDA-RACC-derived serving weight, which may correspond to a slightly tapped or packed cup fill. Both are legitimate; neither is wrong. The variance is similar to what the cumin seeds entry documented: whole elongated seeds pack differently by settling method, producing a 13.5% range across measurements of the same seed depending on how the cup was filled.

King Arthur Baking does not publish wild rice specifically. Its chart lists no rice variety in dry form other than a generic long-grain entry (99 g per 1/2 cup, or 198 g/cup), and wild rice is absent. There is no direct KA figure to correct or confirm; the closest KA generic long-grain figure would substantially overstate wild rice density if extrapolated.

For practical use, the working figures are: 160 g/cup if the recipe or reference used USDA data, and 180 g/cup if the recipe used producer-label data. When weighing precisely, use the actual carton figure from the specific brand on hand — the 45 g / (1/4 cup) label value is exactly what the recipe author or nutrition tracker probably used. When measuring by cup only, expect the cup to weigh somewhere between 160 and 180 grams depending on how firmly it was filled.

Cooking wild rice takes 45-50 minutes at a 1:2.5 rice-to-water ratio (much longer than white rice, comparable to brown rice), and it expands to roughly 3× its dry volume when cooked. This dramatic expansion is why wild rice appears in blended products like Lundberg's Wild Blend, which contains only 4-6% actual wild rice mixed with brown and red rice — the blend cooks in the shorter brown-rice time while the small proportion of wild rice adds visual contrast and chewy texture. When a recipe calls for a wild rice blend rather than pure wild rice, the density is dominated by the majority-brown-rice component (~180-185 g/cup) and the wild rice minority contributes little to overall cup weight.