Effects of cooking, drying and pretreatment methods on texture and starch digestibility of instant rice

Instant rice produced from a conventional process consisting of the cooking, washing and drying steps possesses poorer eating quality compared with that of freshly cooked rice. The objective of this work was therefore to study the effects of cooking, pretreatment and drying methods on microstructure, textural properties and starch digestability of instant rice after rehydration; jasmine white rice was chosen as a test material. Conventional boiling method and electric rice cooking were selected as the methods to prepare cooked rice. In the case of boiling, cooked rice was frozen at −20 °C or cooled at 4 °C for 24 h prior to drying, while the cooked rice from an electric rice cooker was washed with ambient or cool water for 30 s prior to drying. After pretreatment the cooked rice was dried either by freeze drying or hot air drying at 80 °C. Based on the scanning electron microscopic results it was found that the cooking, pretreatment and drying methods all affected the rice morphology. The hardness and stickiness of instant rice after rehydration were lower for samples prepared from the rice cooker than those of freshly cooked rice, while both textural properties appeared to be improved significantly for the samples from boiling. The texture of the freeze-dried products was not different from that of the air-dried one. The freezing pretreatment provided the texture and glycemic index of instant rice after rehydration similar to those of the freshly cooked rice. On the other hand, the cooling pretreatment resulted in the harder texture and higher glycemic index of the samples.