Rice paper is divided into ordinary rice paper and pill-coating rice paper. These two types of rice paper are different, but the way they are eaten is the same.
Ordinary rice paper is directly wrapped around candy, pastries, or medicine and can be eaten directly. Ordinary rice paper can be used to wrap candy and pastries because it must melt in the mouth without affecting the texture of the food it encloses.
Ordinary rice paper can also be used to wrap cold dishes, cooked food, desserts, snacks, and more. For example: peanut candy, crispy sugar candy, milk candy, candied haws on a stick, salad shrimp rolls, golden salted egg yolk rolls, vanilla ice cream, chocolate, crystal shrimp with salted egg yolk, fried ice cream, high-grade tea, crispy melon rolls, pine-roasted duck rolls, etc.
Pill-coating rice paper is used to reduce the bitter taste when taking medicine. Solid medications such as tablets, pills, and powders with a bitter or unusual taste require special pill-coating rice paper for wrapping.
To ensure that the pill-coating rice paper, when wrapped around the medicine and placed in the mouth with water, does not break, prevents the bitter or unusual taste from seeping out, and becomes slippery and easy to swallow until it reaches the stomach, its flexibility, isolation, and lubricity must be enhanced. Therefore, ordinary rice paper is not suitable, and specially made pill-coating rice paper is required.