Instant rice is a product in which

white rice White rice is milled rice that has had its husk, bran, and germ removed. This alters the flavor, texture and appearance of the rice and helps prevent spoilage, extend its storage life, and makes it easier to digest. After milling ( hulling), t ...

is partially precooked,

dehydrated In physiology, dehydration is a lack of total body water, with an accompanying disruption of metabolic processes. It occurs when free water loss exceeds free water intake, usually due to exercise, disease, or high environmental temperature. Mil ...

, and repackaged in dried form similar in appearance to regular white rice. That process allows the product to be later cooked as if it were normal rice but with a typical cooking time of 5 minutes, compared to the 20-30 minute preparation time for white rice (or yet longer for

brown rice Brown rice is a whole grain rice with the inedible outer hull removed. This kind of rice sheds its outer hull or husk but the bran and germ layer remain on, constituting the brown or tan colour of rice. White rice is the same grain without the h ...

). This process was invented by Ataullah K. Ozai‐Durrani in 1939 and mass marketed by

General Foods General Foods Corporation was a company whose direct predecessor was established in the United States by Charles William Post as the Postum Cereal Company in 1895. The company changed its name to "General Foods" in 1929, after several corporate ...

starting in 1946 as

Minute Rice Minute Rice is a brand of instant rice. The product was introduced in 1949 by General Foods, which merged with Kraft in 1990 and became Kraft General Foods, which became Kraft Foods The second incarnation of Kraft Foods is an American foo ...

, a brand which continues until this day. This is not to be confused with pre-cooked (but not dehydrated) "micro-wave" ready rice which is fully cooked and ready to eat, normally after placing the sealed product in a

microwave oven A microwave oven (commonly referred to as a microwave) is an electric oven that heats and cooks food by exposing it to electromagnetic radiation in the microwave frequency range. This induces polar molecules in the food to rotate and produce ...

, requiring as little as 1 minute to heat a single portion. Another distinct product is

parboiled rice Parboiled rice (also called converted rice and easy-cook rice) is rice that has been partially boiled in the husk. The three basic steps of parboiling are soaking, steaming and drying. These steps make the rice easier to process by hand, while ...

, also known as "converted" rice, a term

trademark A trademark (also written trade mark or trade-mark) is a type of intellectual property consisting of a recognizable sign, design, or expression that identifies products or services from a particular source and distinguishes them from ot ...

ed for what was long sold as Uncle Ben's converted rice. However unlike the pre-cooking of instant rice in order to reduce the cooking time of white rice, the parboiling process is applied directly to

in order to preserve nutrients which are lost in the production of white rice, not to reduce cooking time.

Preparation process

Instant rice is made using several methods. The most common method is similar to the home cooking process. The rice is blanched in hot water,

steamed Steaming is a method of cooking using steam. This is often done with a food steamer, a kitchen appliance made specifically to cook food with steam, but food can also be steamed in a wok. In the American southwest, steam pits used for cooking hav ...

, and rinsed. It is then placed in large

oven upA double oven A ceramic oven An oven is a tool which is used to expose materials to a hot environment. Ovens contain a hollow chamber and provide a means of heating the chamber in a controlled way. In use since antiquity, they have been use ...

s for dehydration until the moisture content reaches approximately twelve percent or less. The basic principle involves using hot water or steam to form cracks or holes in the kernels before dehydrating. In the subsequent cooking, water can more easily penetrate into the cracked grain, allowing for a short cooking time.

Advantages and disadvantages

The notable advantage of instant rice is the rapid cooking time: some brands can be ready in as little as three minutes. Currently, several companies, Asian as well as American, have developed brands which only require 90 seconds to cook, much like a cup of instant noodles. However instant rice is more expensive than regular white rice due to the cost of the processing. And the "cracking" process can lead to a significant increase in broken grains in a package. Like all white rice, instant rice has nutrients removed that are present in brown rice, and soluble minerals can be lost when rice is rinsed; of course, just like white rice, the product can be enriched to restore B-vitamins and other nutrients. Instant rice has fewer of the

calories The calorie is a unit of energy. For historical reasons, two main definitions of "calorie" are in wide use. The large calorie, food calorie, or kilogram calorie was originally defined as the amount of heat needed to raise the temperature of ...

carbohydrates In organic chemistry, a carbohydrate () is a biomolecule consisting of carbon (C), hydrogen (H) and oxygen (O) atoms, usually with a hydrogen–oxygen atom ratio of 2:1 (as in water) and thus with the empirical formula (where ''m'' may or m ...

, and

protein Proteins are large biomolecules and macromolecules that comprise one or more long chains of amino acid residues. Proteins perform a vast array of functions within organisms, including catalysing metabolic reactions, DNA replication, res ...

than regular white rice. The quicker cooking method can result in the rice being less firm in texture than regular rice, and the processing results in a loss of flavor, for which reasons it is quite disparaged by chefs.

References

{{Reflist Food science Grains Rice Instant foods and drinks