Instant rice
Fast-cooking rice / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Instant rice is a white rice that is partly precooked and then is dehydrated and packed in a dried form similar in appearance to that of regular white rice. That process allows the product to be later cooked as if it were normal rice but with a typical cooking time of 5 minutes, not the 20–30 minutes needed by white rice (or the still greater time required by brown rice). This process was invented by Ataullah K. Ozai‐Durrani in 1939[1] and mass-marketed by General Foods starting in 1946 as Minute Rice, which is still made.[2]
Instant rice is not the "microwave-ready" rice that is pre-cooked but not dehydrated;[3] such rice is fully cooked and ready to eat, normally after cooking in its sealed package in a microwave oven for as little as 1 minute for a portion. Another distinct product is parboiled rice[4] (also called "converted" rice, a trademark[5] for what was long sold as Uncle Ben's converted rice); brown rice is parboiled to preserve nutrients that are lost in the preparation of white rice, not to reduce cooking time.