Rice is one of the major crops produced and consumed throughout the world. The objective of the study was to evaluate the effects of using different temperatures to condition the grains and at the start of parboiling on the technological and cooking parameters. The grains were stored with a moisture content of 13% at temperatures of 5, 15, 25 and 35ºC for 7 days, and then subjected at these temperatures to the process of soaking at 60ºC for 300 minutes before parboiling, followed by autoclaving at 116 ± 1ºC with a pressure of 0.6 ± 0.05 kgf cm-2 for 10 minutes and drying to 13% moisture in a static dryer at 35ºC. After parboiling the grains were subjected to an analysis of the yield, incidence of defects, colorimetric and whiteness profiles, cooking time, gravimetric and volumetric cooking yields, textural parameters and a sensory evaluation. It was concluded that higher conditioning temperatures (25 and 35ºC) before parboiling had a negative effect on the incidence of defects, and refrigerator temperatures (5ºC) had a positive effect on the sensory parameter of "firmness", but did not change the behavior during cooking, the gravimetric and volumetric yields or the textural parameters. Artificial cooling of the conditioned grains before parboiling allowed for better industrial and technological quality of the final product.
Parboiled rice; Cooling; Defects; Sensory analysis
