The Ballad of Bobby Flay's Crispy Rice

Bobby Flay has been Food Network royalty since his debut in 1994. Last year, as he marked the beginning of his fourth(!) decade on the channel and the publication of his 18th cookbook — Chapter One, an all-inclusive, back-to-the-very-beginning recollection of the shows, restaurants and recipes that have made him a household name — he was ready for the question on everyone’s minds. During an interview with Parade, Nina Elder went for it. “[C]rispy rice: crutch or clutch?”

“Definitely clutch,” Bobby replied. “I mean, I’m a contrast/texture person when it comes to cooking. Obviously flavor is important, but texture is just as important. And the great thing about crispy rice is I kind of overcook the rice a tiny bit, so it’s nice and fluffy, then I let it chill. When I cook, the edges on the outside get crispy, but the inside is fluffy. To me, that contrast is the key. I think for any kind of long-grain rice, the crispy rice is always going to be better than the not-crispy.” (It should go without saying that crispy rice plays a major role among the essential recipes in Chapter One.)

In the heat of culinary battle on shows like Beat Bobby Flay and BBQ Brawl, Bobby enters Crispy Rice Mode like a Mortal Kombat character with a finishing move. He reaches for that cast-iron pan the way King Arthur draws Excalibur. He — look, the guy really, really likes to make crispy rice. And while trying to collect every last bit of crispy rice lore in one place is likely impossible, we can certainly get a spatula under there and celebrate its crunchiest bits. Shall we dig in?

Paella is the prologue when it comes to Bobby’s Crispy Rice Era. Socarrat — from the Valencian verb socarrar, “to scorch” — is the magnificently charred, pleasurably crunchy layer at the bottom of the pan in a perfectly cooked paella. It was a buzzword in 2017 as Bobby faced Jose Garces, once his fellow gladiator on Iron Chef America, on the fifth episode of Beat Bobby Flay, Season 14. Chef Garces challenged Bobby to best his seafood paella, and Bobby made the game-changing move of preparing his version in individual pans, thus maximizing the socarrat-to-civilian-rice ratio. “I’ve cooked a lot of paella in my life; I think it’s one of the best dishes in the world, because it has so much going on, but it all makes sense,” Bobby said. Cooking the rice separately to control its texture and then finishing it on the stove upended tradition, but it was characteristically competitive. “You would try to beat someone crossing the road, wouldn’t you?!” host Simon Majumdar exclaimed. (Yes, and he’d do it with rice, somehow.)

“I look over at Bobby’s dish [and] I’m not sure it actually qualifies as paella,” chef Garces noted.

The judges disagreed, strenuously: “[The] crispy rice on the bottom is wicked, absolutely,” Madison Cowan said.

“The rice is tasty and feels like the perfect paella rice,” Susan Ungaro agreed.

Bobby’s challenger suffered by comparison: “I do wish the rice was a little more crispy,” Donatella Arpaia said.

“I think my dish was missing that crispy rice element,” Chef Garces conceded.

Bobby took the win — and co-host Alex Guarnaschelli was livid. “I mean, really? Jose Garces’ paella, you even gotta win that one?!”

“My paella reigned supreme by one crusty grain of rice,” Bobby said as he sauntered out of the arena. That finishing move (pun unintended) began with paella, but boy, it would not end there.

The trouble with an unstoppable finishing move, of course, is that it can be used against you. Bobby faced a killer version in the ninth episode of Season 13 when Arizona chef Stephen Jones brought the thunder with Hoppin’ John, a classic Southern concoction of rice and beans. Chef Jones has prepared Hoppin’ John thousands of times, and his rice got a treatment that resembled Bobby’s: he parcooked it on a sheet pan, dried it out in the oven, then crisped it up in a pan with an Old Bay spice mixture to give it a bit of kick. “I get the rice really crispy on the bottom,” he explained. “It imparts texture.”

Co-host Simon Majumdar couldn’t have been more pleased to see Bobby facing technique on par with his own. “That’s smart, I’ve got to say,” he said. “Bobby, we’ve got some crispy goodness going on over here!”

Bobby strove mightily to pull ahead with his own version: He, too, used Carolina Gold rice, then tried to top chef Jones’ vegan Hoppin’ John with a liberal application of bacon fat, chopped bacon and a steamed egg.

Alas, the challenger was the charmer: “[Chef Jones’] crispy rice just warmed my heart,” judge Susan Povich said. When she tried Bobby’s version, “I just wish there was a little more crispiness on the bottom.”

“The bacon was the star,” fellow judge Stephen Starr added. “The rice was sort of secondary.” The takeaway here? One’s signature can be one’s greatest vulnerability — and watch your back when you face a guy who specializes in heirloom rice grown down the road from his other star ingredient.

By Season 22’s fifth episode, when Bobby faced off against Florida phenom Mika Leon, rice-related dish definitions were getting pretty fast and loose. Challenged to create his own version of picadillo, a Cuban classic that generally consists of hash served over a bed of steamed white rice, he went crispy early and emphatically. Heckling from chef Leon (“Turmeric? Anti-inflammatories?!”) and co-host Jesse Tyler Ferguson (“He’s got old joints!”) couldn’t foil Bobby’s focus.

“I’m using some individual pans because I want some crustiness on the bottom of the rice,” Bobby explained. “Also, I think it looks prettier.”

Chef Leon wasn’t fooled: “I take a peek at Bobby’s dish and I feel like I’m in Spain! It looks like a paella.”

Bobby argued that flavors rather than technique imparted authenticity, a line of reasoning he’d return to many times in the years to come. “Even though my dish looked like a paella, all the flavors I used were Cuban, so hopefully that will put me over the top,” he noted before judging.

“This stands out more like a paella," Cuban-American judge Louie Estrada said. “It doesn’t take me back home, but what I will say is the crispy rice is perfect.” Those old joints of Bobby’s turned out another win — and the controversial “crusty” rice was on its way to taking its final form (and meeting its most vocal opponent).

Season 23 opened with “two ladies who are notorious for giving me a hard time: Sunny Anderson and Giada De Laurentiis,” Bobby said. Going toe-to-toe with Santa Fe-based chef Paddy Rawal’s chicken tikka masala, “I’m going to go mostly traditional with a couple of twists here and there,” he explained. “I’m going to use some chicken thighs and spicy tomato masala, and then I’m also going to break out some crispy, crusty basmati rice.”

Sunny swooped in early to heckle: “How many times have you made this? Because [Paddy] does this like 25 times a day.”

Giada got to the point. “Bobby, are you going to make rice to go with this?”

“I’m gonna make you some crispy rice! My side dish is crusty basmati rice,” he replied.

Giada: “Is that traditional?”

Bobby: “Traditions are made to be broken!”

Judge Leah Cohen was “obsessed” with Bobby’s rice, but chef Paddy’s authentic and balanced sauce carried the day. Giada’s commentary walked in this episode, in turn, so Sunny’s could run in the battles to come.

When actress Morena Baccarin and chef Michael Voltaggio challenged Bobby to take on chef Cara Stadler’s mapo tofu in Season 30, Episode 13, he dispensed with mystery and showed his hand. “Cast iron’s out, everybody knows what that means: It’s time for crispy rice,” he said. “I get the cast-iron pan very hot with some canola oil, put the rice in there [and] press it down so it gets crusty.”

Voltaggio had a slightly different take on the move. “Yeah, that crispy rice; he brings that out when he’s nervous.”

“It’s a good trick to have up your sleeve!” Morena noted.

Bobby’s rice divided the judges. “I was a little skeptical with this dish; it’s supposed to be plain white rice,” Chris Cheung said. “But I thought the texture was really good: crispy but chewy rice with the soft tofu.” The 2-1 split decision broke Bobby’s way; was the rice becoming unstoppable? Was regulation in order?

In Season 31’s sixth episode, Bobby played the hits to challenge chef Diego Sanchez’s grilled branzino. “It’s very delicate, so I’m going to serve it whole with crispy rice that has broccoli rabe running through it and a pesto made of piquillo peppers and Calabrian chiles.” (Calabrian chiles are crispy rice’s most notorious partner in crime in Bobby’s kitchen.)

“I’ve heard through the grapevine that this crispy rice is a gimmick to get the win,” singer and co-host Josh Groban said.

“He cooks rice and then generally he drops herbs, a little bit of hot oil on there — see how he’s flattening it all out? You get that surface area, you get that browning, it’s almost like, if you’ve ever seen home fries on a diner griddle and they get that crust and that brown. So good,” co-host Alex explained.

The crispy rice brought it home once again with the judges. “There’s a lot going on, but it all belongs,” Katie Pickens said.

“I love the rice; this [feels] like home, like my mom’s Persian rice,” Einat Admony added.

“I had a little sort of a burned flavor in the crispy rice,” Martie Duncan said, “but it was really good.”

Chef Tomas Chavarria dared Bobby to best him at chicken adobo, a dish the challenger prepared “Filipino-style, with a Latin twist.” Bobby fought back with a chicken adobo paired with crispy rice and crunchy garlic with orange; in one of his favorite riffs on the preparation, he added scallions to the rice before pressing it into the pan with his spatula.

“To me, the star here is this crispy rice,” judge Dale Talde said.

“I second [that],” judge Anton Dayrit added. “The rice is the star of the dish!”

That didn’t sit well with chef Chavarria, whose chicken adobo was the star of his chicken adobo — especially when the judges dinged him for his own rice. “I completely disagree that the rice was undercooked,” he said. “That’s the way that we eat it in Latin America!” Bobby took the win in a 2-1 split, but the rice rumblings would only get louder.

Plenty of hecklers had taken a run at Bobby and his rice by the time Season 35’s ninth episode rolled around, but a true champion of culinary creativity had to claim the stage. Sunny was up to the task, of course. Challenger Chris Dodson, who became a chef in the first place after seeing a documentary about Bobby, proposed a battle with Thai green curry. “He just said ‘Thai green curry,’ so it leaves it open to the imagination,” Bobby contended.

“Do you have an imagination, Bobby?” Sunny shot back. “Is that…? Bobby! What kind of rice are you going to be making with that?!”

“It’s not what you think!” Bobby replied. “So, I have rice, I have coconut milk and water…”

“The thing I’m most worried about,” Sunny told her co-host, actress Jenna Elfman, “I don’t know if you know the legend of the crispy rice.”

“Yeah,” Jenna said, “I know it’s a bit of a…”

“It’s his cheat code!” Sunny shouted.

“You’re like a whistleblower,” Jenna said.

When the rice is unveiled in Act 1, you know it’s coming back with a bang later in the show. Sunny, however, had a weapon of her own. “Where’s that pot of rice you were making, Bobby?” she taunted. “Is it hanging out over here? Whatcha gonna do with that, Bobby? What you got a baking sheet for? Bobby, look me in the eye: ARE YOU MAKING CRISPY RICE?”

“I don’t even know how to make that!” Bobby hedged.

“The first step to recovery is admitting that we have a problem. Are you going to be making crispy rice?” Sunny asked.

“Depending on the time, I might crisp it up a little bit around the edges,” he replied.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the Beat Bobby Flay Kitchen!” Sunny said as a neon sign reading "Crispy Rice" was lowered from the studio ceiling. “Light it up, please! Bobby Flay has decided to pull out his cheat code, crispy rice!”

The audience was ready for their cue and chanted in unison. “Again, Bobby?!”

“Now every time he gets scared and he brings out the crispy rice, this will drop from the ceiling,” Sunny explained. “You guys are here for the first-ever 'Shaming of Bobby Flay’s Crispy Rice'!”

“Bottom line is, crispy rice is better than fluffy rice,” Bobby said. “Not every time, but almost every time.”

“Bobby, you’d think that you would retire it by now,” Sunny said.

“Reinvention!” Jenna agreed.

“Yeah! Come up with something fresh and new, Bobby!” Sunny added.

The coconut rice accompanying Bobby’s Thai green curry with soft shell crab and prawns wasn’t just crispy; it was also the only rice served at all, as chef Dodson pulled his own version when it didn’t turn out as well as he’d hoped. The judges waxed lyrical about Bobby’s crispy rice — and awarded him the win.

Sunny knew how the wind was blowing before she received the judges’ scores. “As soon as we saw that rice come out, we knew what was going down, Bobby,” she said.

“That damn crispy rice somehow prevails through everything!” Jenna agreed. But wait — what was her expression behind the card?

“I don’t believe you! You’re smiling!” Sunny said. “Is it because Bobby gave you a plate?!”

“I mean, it was good,” Jenna admitted.

When chef Kyungbin Min tasked Bobby with beating his bulgogi ssam in Season 36’s seventh episode, author and co-host Katie Lee Biegel — who, like Alex, had been observing Bobby’s moves for a decade — knew the score (and lowered the sign). “Crispy rice, Bobby Flay and his crispy rice, imagine that!” she said. “You know when this sign comes down that it’s official: Bobby Flay is making The Rice.”

“You know Bobby; I think he has so many opportunities to add his Bobby Flay flair to this [battle]: pickling, having sweetness, having spiciness…” Katie mused. “Bobby knows he needs any trick he can [use] to make up lost ground, so he’s making kimchi rice,” Alex observed.

The judges considered chef Min’s rice undercooked — and on Bobby’s side, “the crispy rice was a really nice addition to the dish overall,” judge Aliya Leekong said.

“He pulled out that crispy rice yet again!” Katie cried. “Isn’t it time for some new tricks?!”

“I’m starting to give up on you, my friend,” Alex told Bobby. “All these years of friendship, Bobby, the least you could do is give us a win!”

“Bobby has cooked in more cooking competitions than anyone in the world,” co-host and Food Network mainstay Scott Conant advised the chefs he brought to compete on Season 36’s ninth episode. “Think about that as you’re going into this; it’s all about the details.” Scott’s observation was a canny one; the Crispy Rice juggernaut is all about having a flexible, crowd-pleasing technique so dialed in that Bobby can riff on and execute it in mere minutes and know that it will come out perfectly every time. Brazilian chef Emme Ribiero Collins faced that daunting precision when she challenged him to create moqueca, Bahia’s signature fish stew. She had a technique on lock, too: “In Brazil, you toast the rice so each grain is really loose,” she explained.

“The game plan is to cook a whole lot of fish and shellfish, make some crispy rice with sweet potatoes and black beans, and make a broth that’s really flavorful,” Bobby said. Co-host Eric Adjepong was a little shook. “That crispy rice, I gotta say, it looks delicious.” Was the formula of death going to take the win again?

“The crispy rice and the beans for me didn’t go well with the rest of the plate,” judge Henrique Stangorlini said of Bobby’s moqueca with sweet potato black bean crispy rice.

“I do think that the sweet potato and the black beans are kind of superfluous,” judge Michael Jenkins agreed. “I felt like I was getting a big side of rice to justify [what] I was paying for all of the lobster and halibut, but today Food Network paid for my dish, so I didn’t really need the side.” The win … was chef Emme’s.

“We kicked your butt!” Scott crowed. “With the crispy rice and everything!” As he'd noted, it's all about the details.

Bobby has also been known to introduce crispy rice to brunch, as in 2023’s Holiday Throwdown — and no one knows that better than his daughter, Sophie Flay, who co-hosted the episode (and tried in vain to distract him from his customary moves by heckling him with his own teenage photo). This fixation isn’t just a professional practice, mind you. “Crispy rice is kind of a signature of his,” Sophie said. “Every time I come home at the holidays, there’s always a crispy rice dish of some sort.”

Co-hosts Alex and Sunny joined forces to throw Bobby for a loop on the fourth episode of Season 29, when Nigerian chef Godwin Ihentunge confronted him with maafe — a new-to-him West African peanut stew. “There’s a peanut soup that’s sort of a New Orleans Creole dish,” Bobby mused.

“Bobby, please don’t dance like that when you’re about to make African food!” Sunny begged. Sure enough…

“I’m going to make the rice crusty,” Bobby said, “[with] some canola oil and the sweet potatoes, the scallions and the rice in the cast-iron pan.”

“Is he making crispy rice?” Sunny sputtered. “Bobby, what is going on? Put it in a cast-iron pan? Bobby, what is happening over here? Are you making paella?!”

Bobby knew he was winging it with his stew, but he trusted his technique to carry him through. “My guess is that Godwin’s is definitely more authentic than mine, but I like my dish! It’s very hearty and it has tons of flavor,” he said. Would the judges approve of his interpretation?

Sure enough, “the crispy rice has tons of flavor,” judge Aarthi Sampath said. “The peanut sauce goes really well with the rice,” judge JJ Johnson added, “giving it some texture.”

Like many a challenger before him, Chef Ihentunge fell victim to the pressures of the arena. He pronounced his own rice unsalvageable, took his chances on a stew served without it … and lost. “I would have loved to see some white rice,” JJ said. “I think it would have went really nice with the sauce to soak [the stew] up.”

“Yeah, I would have loved to see some rice or a little bit of starch,” Aarthi agreed.

Where on earth would Bobby’s rice get its comeuppance? “[We] took him all the way to Africa and still couldn’t beat him!” Sunny cried. “This is so disgusting! How’s he do it?!”

By the time she watched Bobby fold chiles into his steak Oscar for a battle against chef Greg Lutes in the 10th episode of Season 33, Sunny was forced to admit that sign-based shaming wasn’t enough to steer him away from his favorite moves. “Really, Bobby, chiles?” she asked. “You tried to hide it! He tried to hide it! Seriously, Bobby? Is there some crispy rice in there, too?!” It was time for her to take her containment campaign on the road.

Regulating rice is about more than just Beat Bobby Flay, and Sunny knew she had to hold the line network-wide. For BBQ Brawl’s Season 5 opener — that is, her first appearance since Bobby’s rice-fueled fourth-season victory — she took a stand.

“Crispy rice isn’t barbecue, Bobby! I first came into contact with it on Beat Bobby Flay,” she explained. “It’s like his crutch, it’s like his binky, and to my chagrin, he made crispy rice last season on BBQ Brawl, so I’m here to actually be the barbecue sheriff.”

“She doesn’t want to see any of my crispy rice because she knows it can be devastating to her with the judges,” Bobby said.

Sunny really didn’t want to see any of his crispy rice, and to co-host Michael Voltaggio’s amusement, she brought the multipiece wardrobe to prove it. “Bobby, you play dirty; you play real dirty,” she noted on Instagram. “But you know what, Bobby? Let me know you scared of me without letting me know you scared of me!”

To competitor Erica Barrett’s delight and Sunny’s horror, Bobby rolled up to a state fair-themed challenge with crispy rice. “I know that Sunny is not going to be happy about this crispy rice,” Erica said, “but hey, this is like iconic, winning crispy rice!”

“Bobby, I just feel like you’re trolling me,” Sunny said. “Where’s your binky at? Right here on the tray!”

“Sunny has crispy rice PTSD,” guest and pitmaster Rodney Scott observed.