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Basmati is a variety of long grain rice, famous for its fragrance and delicate flavor. Its name means "Fragrance of Land" in Urdu. Basmati rice has been cultivated in Pakistan for hundreds of years, and some varieties are now grown in the United States. The Himalayan foothills are said to produce the best basmati. The best types of basmati rice are aged for several years before they are milled and sold.

The grains of basmati rice are much longer than they are wide, and they grow even longer as they cook. They stay firm and separate, not sticky, after cooking. Basmati rice is available both as a white rice and a brown rice. Both of these cook in about 20 minutes. Due to the high amount of starch clinging to the rice grains, many cooks wash this rice before cooking it. Soaking it for half an hour to two hours before cooking makes the grains less likely to break in cooking.
 

Parboiled rice is rice that has been boiled in the husk. Parboiling makes rice easier to process by hand, improves its nutritional profile, and changes its texture. The practice of parboiling rice is more than two thousand years old, and may have started in the Persian Gulf. Today, it is the preferred rice of many in the southern parts of the Indian Subcontinent. Polishing rice by hand, that is, removing the bran layer, is easier if the rice has been parboiled. It is, however, somewhat more difficult to process mechanically. The bran of parboiled rice is somewhat oily, and tends to clog machinery. Most parboiled rice is milled in the same way as white rice. The starches in parboiled rice become gelatinized, making it harder and glassier than other rice. Parboiled rice takes less time to cook, and the cooked rice is firmer and less sticky. In North America, parboiled rice is generally partially or fully precooked by the processor.

Brown rice (or "hulled rice") is unmilled or partly milled rice, a kind of whole grain. It has a mild nutty flavor, is chewier than white rice, becomes rancid more quickly, but is far more nutritious. Any rice, including sticky rice, long-grain rice, or short-grain rice, may be eaten as brown rice.

In much of Asia, brown rice is associated with poverty and wartime shortages, and in the past was rarely eaten except by the sick, the elderly and as a cure for constipation. This traditionally denigrated kind of rice is now more expensive than common white rice, partly due to its relatively low supply and difficulty of storage and transport.