The main ingredient in the popular snack rice cakes is puffed rice.
Puffed rice can be found in breakfast cereals, rice cakes and snack food. It's also used in Chinese, Korean and Indian dishes. Puffing rice is similar to popping corn except that rice does not have enough moisture in the grain to pop. Using steam to condition the rice gets more moisture inside the hull, so that when it's pressure cooked, baked or fried, the grains swell and expand. Add this to my Recipe Box.
History
In the winter of 1901, Dr. Alexander Pierce Anderson discovered puff rice and other grains. For his experiment, he filled test tubes with rice, sealed one end and heated them in an oven until they began to change color. When he broke the test tubes, he heard a loud explosion and found that the grain had expanded. Anderson patented his process and introduced puffed rice to the public at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis by shooting it out of guns.
Pressure Cooking
Some commercial cereal makers such as Quaker Oats use steam and pressure to puff rice. After placing rice in a tank, they add hot steam which builds pressure. When the pressure reaches a certain point, it's quickly released causing the rice to puff several times its original size. Through the early 1900s, this method came to be know as "gun puffing" because the rice went into cylinders that looked like guns.
Baking
Kellogg's uses ovens to puff rice for its Rice Krispies cereal. To add moisture to the grain, the makers boil the rice, then cool and dry it. They run the rice through rollers that crush it. The rice then goes into a hot oven where it swells and expands.
Frying
Puffed rice used in Asian dishes can be created using hot oil. After steaming and cooling the rice, the cook spreads it on a cookie sheet and bakes it until hard and dry. Using small amounts in a strainer, he then lowers the rice into hot oil for just a few seconds. Just before it changes color, the rice will puff and rise.
Tags: puff rice, moisture grain, puffed rice, rice cakes, rice then, test tubes