Cold-storage preservation of cooked rice quality: Exploring challenges and strategies, featuring insights on sushi rice

Rice, a global staple, requires quality preservation in cold storage for food security and consumer preferences. This review focuses on challenges in rice quality, featuring insights on sushi rice rapidly evolving ready-to-eat food with a short shelf-life. Cooked rice storage undergoes crucial changes, notably starch retrogradation, impacting quality, sensory attributes and consumer acceptance. The review analyzes challenges, emphasizing rice quality, exploring various analytical methods such as differential scanning calorimetry, X-ray diffraction, texture profile analysis, nuclear magnetic resonance. Strategies and innovations-physical, chemical and biochemical are discussed for combating sushi rice quality deterioration. The review highlights the potential of additives and the importance of specific water content, pH and temperature to prevent retrogradation in rice. Emphasizing the need for further research and development, this review aims to enhance cold storage methods for rice and sushi rice in particular, ensuring the availability of premium rice products with uncompromised quality.