Depending on where you are from, countries tend to be either wheat based or rice based. For exemple, in the Maghreb (Algeria + Morocco + Tunisia), we don’t really have any traditional rice recipes unlike our middle eastern neighbors.
Unlike them, we are wheat based : we eat a lot of bread, eat couscous and many derived dishes, pastas, etc.
Many of our cakes are even based on semolina.
Other mediterranean countries tend to be similar to us although Spain, Italy, and Turkey (among others) eat quite a lot of rice, which isn’t even cultivated in our region…
What about your country ?
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Wheat, by a big margin. Bread, cookies, cereals, pancakes, heavy sauces with flour; you name it, we have it.
Isn’t all of Europe wheat-based? Though I think traditionally rice was more common in the Mediterranean countries. In Croatia for example, risotto is a common and traditional dish on the coast, while here in continental Croatia we don’t use rice at all in traditional food.
Potato.
Just potato. A little wheat here and there. But no rice before modern times. And before potato, there was turnips!
Germany is based on wheat and rye for bread and barley for beer.
Scotland’s biggest cereal crop is barley and we have a very famous product made from it – Scotch whiskey!
As for consumption, I don’t have any figures but I assume that wheat is eaten here much more than rice.
I believe wheat for us, rice is like used for risotto but that is mostly it. Everything else is wheat
Rice doesn’t grow in most parts of Europe, so it’s a more modern thing as it relies on foreign sources. Wheat can be grown locally, if EU was considered as single country it would be world’s 2nd biggest producer right after China. A third of the world’s wheat actually comes from Eastern Europe, which is why the Ukrainian war is now likely to cause major wheat shortage and famine in many African countries that are depending on it. 80% of wheat in Egypt comes from Ukraine or Russia and Kenya is already struggling with soaring prices.
Finland is rye, oats & barley based, so neither applies.
wheat. And corn as a fallback (like during the nazi occupation in ww2).
Wheat in Belgium, but it is not something that cannot be replaced with other products. The Belgian cuisine is amazing, but I do not feel that the people are extremely attached to particular food where it could form a problem. So if some ingredients are missing, one can find a substitute or even replace the whole dish.
The increase in food prices due to war is not going to be a major problem here as the Belgians will most likely shift to other foods that use different ingredients. Experimenting with food and drinks is what makes it fun.
Italy has quite a big appreciation for rice. Even though the cultivation of rice en masse happened only in the Renaissance and is only possible on a large scale in Northern Italy, where water supply is not an issue, we have taken rice as an integral part of our food culture.
We have selected our own rice varieties unique to Italy, like Carnaroli, Roma, Arborio, etc and in Northern Italy rice competes with corn(polenta) and pasta as the most common first course. In Vercelli there is even a stock exchange for rice. The most common preparation is risotto, which is not a recipe in itself but more of a method of cooking.
But even though the North is the hearth of our rice culture, the center and the south also have very good recipes, like [supplì al telefono](https://www.manusmenu.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/1-Suppli-4-1-of-1.jpg) in Rome, [sartu di riso](https://s6890.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Sart%C3%B9-Square.jpg) in Naples or [arancini](https://i0.wp.com/www.sicilianicreativiincucina.it/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/aranciniallamessinese4.jpg?fit=681%2C1024&ssl=1) in Sicily.
In my hometown we even have a cake made with rice boiled in milk and reduced to a dough.
In Italy, wheat is certainly one of the traditional foods (just take a look at Italian cuisine, from the Alps to Sicily, with all the different types of pasta, not to mention pizza), although there is a certain tradition of rice in Upper Italy (just think of risotto) as well as maize (polenta), and potatoes (present in many dishes as a condiment or even as a filling).
> Depending on where you are from, countries tend to be either wheat based or rice based.
No. Northern Europe is potato land. And before the potatoes came, most people here ate slurry made from barley three times a day. Oatmeal was also common. Traditional Northern European bread is either from rye, or from a mix of rye, spelt (an old kind of wheat), and sometimes barley.
i wonder if theres even a single european country thats solidly in the rice camp! it sounds like maybe italy or some other southern countries might be a bit of both, but i think europe’s just in a wheat stranglehold.
The question is not wheat / rice it is wheat / potato.
Definitely rice-based.
Here grandmas say that, to be healthy, one must have a varied diet: rice with chicken, rice with rabbit, rice with meatballs, rice with turnips, rice with beans, rice with onions, black rice, rice with fish, rice with…
Our Bread Culture has been admitted to the Unesco World Heritage. Do i need to say more?
I don’t know how traditional they are, but Morocco has many rice-based dishes. Rice with milk, rice salad, chicken rice, yellow rice as a side dish, and so on.
Half and half. We eat daily bread but we have lots of rice based dishes. Also we have fideus (noodles) and macarrons (penne) and quite a lot pasta based soups.
See what [Tossal says](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEurope/comments/u3rbpf/are_you_a_wheat_or_a_rice_based_country/i4rowzi/)
Wheat but we do have a few traditional rice recipes
France is mostly wheat based because of the importance of bread, but there’s also some potatoes, especially in the north and east and rice in the south.