Table 1 presents the water absorption of steamed noodles and frozen cooked noodles for different steaming times. With the increase of steaming time, water absorption of all steamed noodles increased slowly. As for frozen cooked noodles, water ab- sorption obviously decreased during the first 3 min, and then slightly increased, but the values remained below those of their non-steam-treated samples. This might be due to the inhibition of water uptake caused by a more compact noodle structure, as can be seen in SEM images (Fig. 3). The steamed noodles showed gelati- nized starch denatured protein. Meanwhile, the gelatinized starch at the surface of noodle required more water than ungela- tinized starch interior (Del Massera, 2000), which made it more difficult for water to migrate from the exterior to the interior.