Why Does Rice Turn Soft When You Cook It

Why does a hard grain of rice turn tender in a pot of water? And where does the cooking water go? Follow one marked grain from the preparation bowl through cooking and back to its original plate. A continuous route takes us across its boundary to the starch within, where heat and water work together. Separate soaked and partly cooked portions reveal why a wet surface, a firmer middle and a tender spoonful can tell different stories. We also explore why softness and stickiness are different parts of rice texture. Subscribe to The Curious Plate for more food mysteries hiding in your kitchen. CHAPTERS 00:00 A hard grain, a soft spoonful 00:52 Three portions, three histories 01:51 What the water meets 02:52 Follow the water across 03:55 Heat and water change the starch 05:11 Why the middle can lag behind 06:12 Soft and sticky are different questions 07:14 Keep the history after heating 07:58 The same grain returns SOURCES Magnetic resonance imaging of single rice kernels during cooking https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15504... Visualizing the Progress of Starch Gelatinization in a Rice Grain during Cooking https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/... Water absorption and starch gelatinization in whole rice grain during soaking https://bibliotecadigital.exactas.uba... Degree of Gelatinization of Starch during the Cooking Process of Rice https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/... The relationship between translucency of rice grain and gelatinization of starch in the grain during cooking https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3437340/ Rice starches. I. Structural aspects provide insight into crystallinity characteristics and gelatinisation behaviour of granular starch https://www.sciencedirect.com/science... The molecular structural features controlling stickiness in cooked rice, a major palatability determinant https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles... Moisture distribution of soaked rice grains observed by magnetic resonance imaging and physicochemical properties of cooked rice grains https://www.sciencedirect.com/science... Why Do Gelatinized Starch Granules Not Dissolve Completely? Roles for Amylose, Protein, and Lipid in Granule Ghost Integrity https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jf07... #Rice #FoodScience #TheCuriousPlate