Physico-Chemical and Cooking Properties of Some Rice Varieties to Produce Salty and Sweet Puffed Rice

To determine the possibility of producing puffed snacks from rice grains, physical, chemical, cooking and puffing properties of three rice varieties, namely Sakha 101, Giza 178 and Egyptian Jasmine beside one Basmati type were investigated. Results showed that Sakha 101 has the highest percentage of brown, milled and head rice and the lowest hulls and broken rice percentage followed by Giza 178. While for broken rice character, Egyptian Jasmine showed the highest percentage of broken rice followed by Sakha 101 and Giza 178. Moreover, the results reported that there were significant differences in the protein contents between Sakha 101 (8.23%) and the other studied varieties being 7.1, 7.35 and 6.72 % for Giza 178, Egyptian Jasmine and Basmati grain rice, respectively. As for puffed yield character, Basmati grain showed the highest yield 96.72 followed by Egyptian Jasmine rice (96.1%), then Giza 178 tailed behind (93.56%). Sakha 101 had the highest expansion volume, whereas, Egyptian Jasmine had the lowest expansion volume. No significant differences in expansion ratio character in Sakha 101, Giza 178 and Basmati grains. Egyptian Jasmine had the lowest expansion ratio. The results of organoleptic evaluation for the prepared salty puffed rice indicated that, the samples of salty puffed rice from Sakha 101 recorded better scores for crispness and taste characters compared with other salty puffed rice samples. Moreover, no significant differences were found in flavour and overall acceptability for all salty puffed rice samples. On the other hand, all sweaty puffed rice samples belonging to different varieties showed a good overall acceptability. It can be recommended that, salty and sweet puffed rice could be prepared from different varieties of rice