Ready to eat shelf-stable brown rice in pouches: effect of moisture content on product’s quality and stability

Abstract

Despite several nutritional benefits of brown rice (BR) its consumption remains limited compared to white rice. Two of the major barriers to its consumption are long cooking time and limited shelf life. However, those two hurdles can be overcome through the development of shelf-stable BR pouches to create new ready-to-eat (RTE) products, a food category that is gaining important market shares. Nevertheless, scarce information is available on the production and shelf-life stability of ready-to-eat BR products. The first objective of this study was the determination of the optimal moisture range to fully cook BR. The second objective was to determine the effect of moisture content and storage time on two fundamental parameters for consumer’s acceptance of rice: color and texture. Three RTE BR pouches with moisture contents of 54%, 57% and 60% were produced and texture and color were evaluated after 1 year of storage. Significant changes in hardness and stickiness were reported during long-term storage. Moisture content negatively affected hardness and positively affected stickiness. Furthermore, storage time and moisture showed a significant effect on rice color. The present results provide information that will be useful to design new RTE meals to promote brown rice consumption.

Screening new breeding japonica rice varieties by rice quality, three processing characteristics, and odor characteristics

“…The L *, a *, b *, and Δ E values of KY‐38 rice were 70.36, −1.02, 8.63, and 20.6, respectively, and those parameters had significantly higher ( p < 0.05) than that of other rice samples (Table 1). Previous research findings showed that the higher the L value of rice, the lower the E value, indicating the fresher the rice (Fan et al., 2017; Federici et al., 2021; Jamila et al., 2015). Thus, in the view of the rice color parameters, the H2‐63 and H2‐73 had poor rice quality compared with other rice samples.…”

“…Water content is a crucial factor affecting rice quality and storage quality. High water content leads to grain mildew, and the higher the water content, the faster the quality decline (Federici et al., 2021). The moisture content of the rice samples varied from 12.85% to 13.56% (Table 1).…”

“…The texture characteristics of 13 rice varieties are shown in Table 2. Hardness was the most critical textural attribute affecting rice consumer acceptability (Federici et al., 2021). The hardness of rice samples differed from 19.50 N (H2‐82) to 28.26 N (H2‐73).…”

Ready to Eat Food: A Reason for Enhancement in Multidrug Resistance in Humans

“…However, the development of ready-to-eat brown rice products overcomes these limitations. 13 RTE fish is preserved in chilling and freezing conditions, maintaining its quality for extended periods. 14 In metros and urban areas, RTE food is a trend, catering to individuals with hectic schedules who lack the time to prepare meals.…”

A Study on Storage Stability of Brown Rice-Based Instant Khichdi Mix

“…In India, the majority of food is consumed at home, but food consumption outside the home has increased due to the increase in urbanization, changing lifestyle, increasing working women and less time to cook which increased the need for convenience foods [1]. The requirement for ready-to-serve/instant foods has further gained importance in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic, as they provide not only an easy solution to minimize handling and contact-free delivery of food but also are a lunch option alternative for individuals who would have normally fed at restaurants that were largely shut down during the pandemic [2].…”