The decreasing consumption of rice is a serious problem in
Japan. Thus, a ‘‘rice slurry’’ was developed as a new liquid food
material to replace rice flour. We investigated the milling conditions
to create fine rice particle smaller than 20 lm and the effects
of a thickener to improve the physical stability of the slurry. In
addition, this rice milk was subjected to a sensory evaluation.
The minimum D50 and D75 of the brown rice slurry were
6.2 lm and 45.4 lm, respectively, with a water feeding rate of
40 mL/min and milling speed of 50 rpm. Milling brown rice finer
than 20 lm appears to be challenging.
Separated milling method was used to mix the white and rice
bran slurries to establish a fine rice slurry after separately milling
the white rice and rice bran materials. The minimum D50 and D75
of the mixed rice slurry were 5.0 lm and 16.1 lm, respectively,
which was less than 20 lm.
Stokes’s law predicted that the sedimentation velocity
decreases exponentially with the viscosity and reaches a constant
value at 80 mPa s. The rice slurry was stabilized by adding more
than 0.1% xanthan gum.
Materials that did not contain xanthan gum were rated higher
in the sensory evaluation. However, the material that contained
0.3 wt% xanthan gum received the highest favorability rating of
55.6%.
The development of ‘‘rice milk’’ is expected to be improved by
the addition of flavors and regulation of its composition.