Black rice is still a niche product, but its popularity seems to be growing.

“I have to order it [from our supplier] a lot more often than I used to, that’s for sure,” says Linda Barry, the manager of Barry Farm Foods, a food distributor in Wapakoneta, Ohio, that began carrying black rice about three years ago.

Lotus Foods—which first introduced black rice to the U.S. market in 1995—has seen steadily increasing sales as well, says Caryl Levine, the co-owner of the El Cerrito, Calif.-based company.

Levine has been a believer ever since she tried her first bowl of steaming black rice in China. “I loved the taste and texture, and the color,” she says. “You get this up-front nutty taste, and almost a hint of fruit or floral at the finish. It’s very complex.”

The taste won’t win everyone over. The notoriously finicky American palate may be the biggest obstacle facing black rice, says Marisa Moore, RD, a national spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association.

Some of her clients still find it “a challenge to incorporate brown rice [in their diets], because it is a different flavor and is chewier,” Moore says—and black rice is even chewier and more intense than brown rice. (To address this problem, Xu and his colleagues are developing a patented process to make black rice fluffier and less coarse.)

Because the health benefits of black rice lie in the bran, it’s important to choose whole-grain varieties when shopping. As with brown rice, Moore suggests, you should look for “whole black rice” at the top of the ingredients list.

There are other ways of using the rice besides eating it straight. Levine makes homemade black-rice bran powder by putting the dried kernels in a coffee grinder. A dusting of the powder on fish or in pancakes adds a nice flavor boost, she says.

Use enough of it, and the powder will add a distinctive purplish hue. In fact, if black-rice cultivation grows in scale, powder from the rice bran could be used as a healthful food coloring in sodas and other products, Xu says.

Even if black rice becomes a staple on your dinner table, you should still make room in your diet for fruits like blueberries, cranberries, and raisins, Moore says. Blueberries and black rice “have different offerings,” she points out. “With the blueberries, you get an additional amount of vitamin C.”