Cooking qualities. Cooking qualities were determined
according to AACC standard methods No. 66-50.01 and No. 54-
50.01 (AACC, 1999a,b): 5 g of dried rice noodle was boiled in 150 ml
distilled water for 4 min, drained for 5 min, and then weighed.
Cooking water was evaporated and dried at 105 C to a constant
weight. Cooking loss was expressed as a percentage of dry matter
lost during cooking to dry sample weight. Thewater absorptionwas
the percentage of weight increase in cooked rice noodles compared
to dried samples.
2.2.7.2. Textural properties. Dry and semi-dry rice noodles were
soaked in water for 10 min, boiled in water for 3 min, and immediately
cooled in tap water. Cooked noodles were drained on
a stainless steel screen and measured immediately. Fresh noodles
were measured immediately after cooling down to room temperature.
Tensile strength of the noodles was measured following the
method of Stable Micro Systems and Bhattacharya et al. (1999). The
noodle strand was wound around the parallel rollers of a spaghetti/
noodle tensile grip analyzer (TA.XT; Stable Micro Systems, UK) to
anchor the sample ends and reduce any slippage. The maximum
force (g) referred to the resistance to breakdown of the noodle. The
distance (mm) at which the strand started to break indicated
extensibility.
A cooked noodle strand of 1 mm thickness was compressed by
a cylinder probe (35 mm diameter) until the deformation
reached 75% at a speed of 1 mm/s. The pause between the first
and second compressions was 0.5 s. From the force/time curve of
the texture profile, textural parameters including hardness and
adhesiveness were obtained. Ten measurements were made for
each sample.