Hapa Rice

Hapa Rice is a 50/50 mix of white rice and brown rice. It's is very popular in Hawaii. You'll find it on restaurants menus and home kitchens (a good way to get everyone to eat more brown rice!) This is how we make it in the rice cooker ^_^

Have you heard of hapa rice? Most people in Hawaii know what it is, but I rarely see it on menus outside of Hawaii (unless it's at a very trendy restaurant hahaha).

Hapa rice is not fancy. It's simple and good. It's literally half brown rice and half white rice, cooked together.

We often make hapa rice at home. We use the rice cooker and it's just as easy as cooking "regular" rice.

Hapa Rice is also a good way to incorporate more brown rice into our diet. Half our family prefers brown rice. The other half prefers white rice. This is the ideal compromise 😉

What Is Hapa?

Hapa is the Hawaiian word for "half" or "mixed."

We usually use the word hapa when referring to people and ethnicities. Hawaii is a true melting pot, and many people have mixed ethnicities.

For example, a friend is half-Japanese and half-German. She can say that she's hapa. And people are like, ah cool! What kind hapa? Then she says, Japanese-German.

That's where the name of this dish comes from. Half brown rice and half white rice makes hapa rice ^_^

Ingredients

Here's what you'll need:

• White rice
• Brown rice

You can use any type of rice (long grain, short grain, etc), but we usually use Japanese short grain rice.

If you're in Honolulu, you can buy good quality rice at so many places. We love The Rice Factory in Kakaako where they mill your rice to order...so fresh!

You can also find a large variety of Japanese short grain rice at markets like Nijiya (I go to the location at Ala Moana), Mitsuwa, J Shop, and Tokyo Central.

Note: In the photo above, I got the white rice from J Shop and the brown rice from Nijiya.

Buy one bag of white rice, and one bag of brown rice. If you don't eat a lot of rice, then buy one a small bags (I've seen 2 pound bags at the market).

We go through a lot of rice so I purchase 15+ pound bags. It's pretty nuts how fast we run through rice. Sometimes I end up cooking rice twice in a day...

Instructions

Let's get cooking!

Combine both the white rice and brown rice in a pot.

Rinse the rice several times in water until the water runs almost clear.

Note: I like to rinse the rice directly in the rice cooker pot - it is one less thing to wash!

Fill the rice cooker pot with water up to the “2 cup” line.

Note: You'll notice that there are different cup lines for different types of rice. The cup line for brown rice is located higher up the pot than it is for white rice. This is because brown rice needs more water to cook.

Because we're cooking half white and half brown rice, fill it to the line that is located between the white and brown lines for the "2 cup" mark.

Cook the rice as you normally would in the rice cooker. There should be an automatic button setting on the rice cooker.

Once the rice is done cooking, let it sit for 10 minutes. Then open the rice cooker and gently fluff the rice with a rice paddle.

It's ready to eat!

Top Tip

Rice cookers typically come with a measuring cup (it looks like this). That measuring cup is called a "rice cup."

Does 1 rice cup equal 1 regular measuring cup? NO.

Make sure to keep this conversion in mind if you don't have a rice cup:
1 rice cup = ¾ regular cup.

FAQ

Hapa Rice Recipe