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Flavor Retention and Physical Properties of Rice Cakes Prepared from Coated Rice Grain

¹United States Department of Agriculture-ARS-Western Regional Research Center, 800 Buchanan St., Albany, CA 94710. Names are necessary to report factually on available data; however, the USDA neither guaranties nor warrants the standard of the product, and the use of the USDA implies no approval of the product to the exclusion of others that may also be suitable. ²Corresponding author. Phone (510) 559-5742. Fax: (510) 559-5936. E-mail: arturk@pw.usda.gov

Flavored rice cakes are produced commercially by spraying a flavor coating on the cake surface. This study describes a method of making a flavored coating that is applied to individual rice grains before puffing and results in a more uniform flavor distribution. Rice was coated at 5% or 10% levels with coating materials made of jet-cooked (JC) starch or starch cooked in a water bath (WB), corn starch powder, salt, and a flavor compound. The viscosity of coating materials made with WB starch was twice that of coatings made of JC starch. Rice coated at 10% level had decreased specific density of rice cakes. Rice cakes made from coated grain were similar in appearance to cakes made from uncoated rice but had higher flexural strength. Retention of flavor volatiles after puffing the coated grain was 82.8–56.8% for apple, 72.5–40.3% for anise, and 52.5–24.8% for onion flavor. The flavor volatiles measured in the rice cakes decreased during a three-month storage period to 49.3% for apple, 25.8% for anise, and 10.1% for onion flavor. Slightly higher retention of flavor volatiles was observed in cakes made with WB starch than in cakes made with JC starch. The difference in retention of flavor volatiles between starch slurry or starch-oil emulsion treatments was small.