Technological Interventions for Convenient Rice Preparation

Rice is considered as staple food in many parts of the world and has been the major source of calorie intake to the poor households. The ever fast changing world and its busy lifestyle demands healthy and convenient products that requires less preparation time. Such convenient rice analogues may be in the form of instant rice or reconstituted rice fulfilling the need and offering immense market potential as a substitute of natural rice. Instant rice is processed (cooking and drying of natural rice) to make it readily available to the consumer. On the other hand, reconstituted rice is formed from a similar mixture of ingredients (may be rice or non-rice with additives) by a shaping process (generally through extrusion). Since past few decades, many work have been conducted involving different technologies and processes in order to achieve desired quality characteristics pertaining to colour, texture, shape, cooking characteristics and stability etc. This article reviews the previous studies involving various approaches and technological interventions for the formation of good quality rice analogues.