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Paddy Rice or Rough Rice
Brown Rice
Milled Rice
Broken Rice
Rice Bran and Stabilized Rice Bran
Organic Rice
Parboiled Rice
Instant Rice
IQF Rice
Instant Rice
Instant Rice or Quick Cooking Rice is rice that has been precooked and then dried so that the consumers can recook the rice in a short period of time. Kraft General Food's "Minute Rice" is instant rice. Regular white rice takes about 15 minutes to cook. Parboil Rice takes about 18 minutes to cook. Instant rice can be ready in a little as 3 minutes.
Cooking rice involves getting moisture to the center of the kernel then getting that moisture to a temperature of over about 160 F to gelatinize the starch. Raw starch in uncooked rice is tightly compacted and so it takes about 15 minutes for boiling hot water to migrate to the center of the kernel. There are several processes to make instant rice, but the one most commonly used starts much like the home cooking process. Rice is blanched in hot water, steamed, and then rinsed. Then the rice is then dried in a hot oven drier. The degree of cooking and degree of puffing in the drier determine the final cook time for the instant rice.
When the rice is cooked again by the consumer, the water migrates faster through the kernel because the starch has been gelatinized and there are many small cracks and fissures in the kernel. Quality of the final cooked rice is affected by the instantizing process. The faster the rice cooks, the lower the quality. Instant rice that cooks in 10 minutes is very close to the real thing. Instant rice that cooks in 5 minutes has a much poorer texture that rice cooked in a home rice cooker. Rice that is ready in hot water (like cup of noodles) is very mushy. All companies involved are trying to improve the process, but it is impossible to make a dry instant rice that cooks in under five minutes that is equal in quality to rice cooked in the home in a rice cooker.
Most companies that manufature instant rice sell the rice to the consumer though grocery stores.
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