The SEM images revealed that the cooked normal rice with the vacuum soaking and the HHP soaking had smaller cavities and larger connection parts compared to that with the atmospheric pressure soaking (Fig. 2a–d). This result indicated that the soaking treatments under the vacuum and the high pressure conditions could prevent the microstructure damage of cooked normal rice and generate more network structure. The network formed could result in the higher springiness and cohesiveness, which were accorded with the results in Section 3.3. Furthermore, the soaking under the higher pressure (400 MPa) caused the holes smaller.