The effect of soaking and high pressure processing on cooking properties of brown rice

Abstract

<abstract> <bold>Abstract.</bold> Brown rice has high nutritive value, but it was not widely consumed because of its bad cooking property, especially its lower water absorption and longer cooking time as compared with white rice. In this study, soaking and high pressure processing (HPP) were applied to improve the cooking property of brown rice. The water absorption, cooking time and texture of brown rice, treated by soaking and high pressure process, were investigated. Results showed that, the water absorption increased with soaking temperature and soaking time. The effect of high pressure treatment on water absorption was smaller than soaking process. When soaking at lower temperature, cooking time was intensely reduced with the prolonged soaking time, this was not found at higher temperature. After treated at 300 MPa for 20 min, the cooking time of brown rice was 16.5 min. It was shorter than all the soaking processed samples without HPP. It was because that high pressure treatment induced structure destruction and accelerated water penetration in the brown rice grains. It was further deduced that the effect of structure destruction on the texture was more significant than the moisture content.