Development of a rapid – cooking rice from Sri Lankan basmati rice varieties and analyzing their physicochemical, cooking and sensorial properties

Abstract

In the modern world, mainly due to urbanization, the day-to-day lives of people are becoming busier. The relatively long cooking time has discouraged the consumption of rice among busy people. Therefore, rapid-cooking rice was developed using three different locally grown basmati rice varieties as white basmati, red basmati, and super kernel and by three different cooking methods as boiling, pressure-cooking, and steaming. Each type of rice samples was washed, soaked in water and prepared by proposed cooking methods and subjected to rapid cooling and oven dried for 6 hours at 60±2˚C. Nine different combinations of rapid-cooking rice were formed by applying each cooking method separately to selected rice varieties and studied their physicochemical and sensorial properties. The data obtained were analyzed by two factor factorial design using Minitab-17 statistical software. The selected rice variety significantly affects the changes in density, rehydration ratio, rehydration time, volume expansion, and solid gruel loss of rapid-cooking rice and the selected preparation method significantly affects the changes in density, optimum cooking time, rehydration time, volume expansion, water absorption capacity, and solid gruel loss of rapid-cooking rice. Both rice varieties and preparation methods do not affect the gelatinization temperature of rice. Super kernel rapid-cooking rice, prepared by the pressure-cooking method has the lowest density (0.41 g/cm3), lowest moisture content (7.46%), lowest optimum cooking time (8 minutes), highest rehydration ratio (1.21), lowest rehydration time (5 minutes), highest volume expansion (1.81) and highest water absorption capacity (0.96). Sensory evaluation was carried out by thirty semi – trained panelists and super kernel rapidcooking rice, prepared by the pressure-cooking method has the highest preference. The keeping quality of the selected combination by sensory evaluation was determined for a month in lowdensity polyethylene (LDPE), high-density polyethylene (HDPE), and metalized polyester (Al coated) packaging materials. The lowest absorbed moisture content (0.1687g) was observed in rapid-cooking rice samples packed in metalized polyester packaging. Super kernel rapid-cooking rice, prepared by the pressure-cooking method packed in metalized polyester packaging is selected as the most commercially viable rapid-cooking rice out of nine treatment combinations.