JPS60227643A - Method and apparatus for continuous cooking of rice - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To prepare soft cooked rice, efficiently and continously, by passing rice through hot water to effect the preliminary cooking and hydration, and carrying out the cooking in the course of being transferred with a net conveyor. CONSTITUTION:(i) Rice 30 is introduced at a prescribed rate from the hopper 1 to the hot-water tank 5 supplied with hot water of about 100 deg.C, transferred by the rice conveyor 7 (7a is bar) along the direction of the arrow to promote the conversion to alpha-starch and obtain cooked and hydrated rice. (ii) The cooked rice 30 is supplied to the net conveyor 13 moving along the direction of the arrow. (iii) Finally, the rice is subjected to the finish cooking in the finish cooking chamber 26 with hot steam of >=101 deg.C, steamed sufficiently in the steaming chamber 27 (19 and 20 are blasting port ot steam, 21 is cover, 22 and 17 are stirring roll), and delivered to the dishing stage.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to a continuous steaming method and apparatus for continuously cooking rice, a staple food.

Background of the Invention and Prior Art Continuous steamers for producing strong rice for making koji from rice by continuous steaming have been used in the brewing industry for some time, and various types have been proposed. As is well known, strong rice for making koji is hard steamed rice with low moisture content, and is steamed rice for the production of koji mold, which is not suitable for eating at all. If edible rice can be cooked by continuous steaming, a large amount of rice can be produced very efficiently, so it is highly desired by school lunch centers and large-scale cafeterias. For this reason, various efforts and improvements were made to the continuous steaming machine for brewing, but without success, and it was concluded that it was impossible to cook edible rice using continuous steaming. .

Therefore, in school lunch centers, large-scale cafeterias, etc., a rice cooking method is used in which rice and a certain amount of water are placed in a rice cooker and heated using the Batuchi method. However, the batch method requires a large installation area and has the disadvantage that the rice cooking capacity is limited. On the other hand, in order to increase the rice cooking capacity by using a continuous method, transporting the rice cooker, removing and loosening the rice,
It requires ancillary equipment such as cleaning the rice cooker, and also requires a place to store the rice cooker, so it requires many types of ancillary equipment, and has the disadvantage that it is very inefficient in terms of installation space and cost. there were.

Further, Japanese Patent Publication No. 31-2093 discloses a continuous steaming rice cooker having the same technical concept as the present invention. However, in this rice cooker, washed rice is placed from a hopper onto an endless wire mesh or slat conveyor to a thickness of about 1 CTL, first heated with steam in a primary steaming chamber inside the rice cooker, and then boiled in a hot water bath. is taking. In this way, steam is first applied to the washed rice on the conveyor inside the rice cooker.

If the rice is heated on a conveyor, it takes time to heat the washed rice, and since the rice is heated while being washed on a conveyor, the thermal efficiency is poor and a large amount of steam is wasted. In addition, due to poor thermal efficiency, washed rice can only be placed on the conveyor to a thickness of about 16r/1, which results in a small rice cooking capacity and a long cooking time, resulting in poor efficiency. . Furthermore, since one endless conveyor is used, a large amount of driving force is required for transporting the conveyor, and a considerable amount of electric power is consumed to drive the conveyor. Furthermore, in this rice cooker, the steam temperature is not disclosed, and as mentioned above, there is no continuous steaming type automatic rice cooker in practical use in this industry to date. I can't imagine that it would turn out to be such a delicious meal.

This is because the temperature of the steam during the final steaming is an important point in order to produce glossy, fluffy, and delicious rice.

Purpose of the Invention The present invention has been made in order to eliminate the above-mentioned drawbacks, and provides a continuous steamer that can continuously and efficiently cook a large amount of fluffy and delicious rice in a relatively small space without using any incidental equipment. A rice cooking method and apparatus are provided.

DESCRIPTION OF EMBODIMENTS Hereinafter, embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings.

The accompanying drawing is a schematic side view showing an embodiment of the continuous steaming rice cooking apparatus according to the present invention to which the method of the present invention is applied. first,
Rice containing water soaked and drained in the previous process is stored in a rice storage container.
For example, it is inserted into the hopper 1. This rice containing moisture is continuously fed into the hopper 1 by suitable means (not shown).

The rice in the hopper 1 is dispensed from the bottom of the hopper 1 in fixed quantities and sent to the hot water tank 5. The boiling water tank 5 is provided with a rice feeding bar conveyor 7 having a large number of bars 7a attached at predetermined intervals and stretched between a pair of rolls 6 and 8. In other words, hot water is being supplied at a temperature of 100°C or close to it. The rice feed bar conveyor 7 is constantly driven in the direction of the arrow by rotation of at least one of the rolls 6 and 8, and moves the rice fed into the hot water tank 5 in fixed quantities in the hot water tank, bringing it to a boiling state. First, the rice core is heated to a temperature of around 90°C to promote gelatinization, and then water is added while cooking the rice. The heated and water-cooked rice is sent from the boiling water tank 5 onto the net conveyor 16. In the illustrated example, the net conveyor 13 is stretched across four rolls 11, 12, 15, and 16, and is driven in the direction of the arrow in the figure by rotation of at least one of these rolls. Since the rice is sent from the boiling water tank 5 to the net conveyor 1 in fixed quantities, the rice on the net conveyor 13 is conveyed with a substantially constant thickness and width. Of course, a means for leveling the rice to a certain thickness and width may be provided. The rice on the net conveyor 16 is first sent to a finishing steaming chamber 26 equipped with a cover 21, where a steam blowing pipe 20 disposed below the net conveyor 13 is sent.
It is finished steamed with high temperature steam of 101° C. or higher blown out from the steamer, and then sent to the steaming chamber 27, which is also equipped with a lid 21. The cooked rice on the conveyor is sufficiently uniformed by high-temperature steam blown out from a steam blowing pipe 19 disposed below the net conveyor 16 in the uniforming room 27, and the rice is finished as glossy, fluffy, and delicious. After the delicious rice is finished in this way, the stirring roll 1
7, and then, for example, the next plate of rice is delivered to the process. Steam blow-off pipes 19 and 20 are connected to a steam source (not shown) via a valve 28 and steam pipe 14.

The rice obtained by the above-mentioned method and apparatus of the present invention is fluffy and glossy, has almost no crushed rice, is not mushy, and can be cooked in a rice cooker, which was previously unimaginable through continuous steaming. The quality of the rice was just as good as, or even better than, rice cooked with rice.

In this way, it has good white discoloration, glossy and plump,
What's more, to cook delicious rice with almost no rice dripping, the rice containing moisture is fed into a boiling water tank where boiling water is stored, and the rice core is raised to a temperature of around 900C to become alpha. In addition, the temperature is increased to 101° C. in the finishing steaming chamber 26 with the cover 21 in the next finishing steaming process. This is thought to be due to finishing steaming using higher-temperature steam.

According to the inventor's experiments, when the temperature of boiling water is lower than 90°C, the promotion of gelatinization is delayed, and the lower the temperature, the worse the absorption of the hot water becomes. I couldn't raise it. The temperature of the hot water mentioned above is the value at normal pressure, so 100°C hot water means the maximum temperature at normal pressure. On the other hand, even if only the temperature of the boiling water was limited, if the temperature of the steam in the final steaming was low, the rice would not be delicious. That is, when the temperature of the steam was lower than 101° C., the above-mentioned white discoloration occurred, and the rice was not cooked into the best rice that was glossy, fluffy, and so-called soft on the inside and hard on the outside that was delicious even when it got cold. There is no particular upper limit to the temperature of steam, but it may need to be higher in cold regions. However, there are disadvantages in that there is virtually no change in the quality of the cooked rice even if the temperature is raised to 130°C or higher, and that the steam pressure has to be raised considerably, resulting in poor efficiency. Furthermore, by adjusting the temperature of the boiling water and the temperature of the steam during the final steaming, you can change the state of the cooked rice to some extent (like slightly harder rice or slightly softer rice).
Another advantage is that the temperature can be set according to the purpose. In addition, even without the unevenness chamber 27, the rice was cooked to be glossy, fluffy, and delicious without the white discoloration described above. This is thought to be due to the fact that the finishing steaming chamber 26 has a cover and has a certain length (in the moving direction), so that the rice is sufficiently uniformed in the finishing steaming chamber 26. Therefore, the steaming chamber 27 may be removed, and the finishing steaming chamber 26 may be lengthened depending on the case, and can be changed as desired.

Note that, as shown in the figure, appropriate ingredients are added to the rice sent from the boiling water tank 5 onto the net conveyor 13 from the ingredient supply device 9, and the rice and ingredients are mixed with the stirring roll 22 to produce the desired mixed rice. You can make it. Further, by adding an appropriate flavoring liquid to the rice sent out onto the net conveyor 16 from the flavoring supply amount 10 and mixing it with the rice using the stirring roll 22, rice with the desired flavor can be obtained. In the figure, 30 indicates the flow of rice.

As mentioned above, in the present invention, rice containing water is boiled,
That is, the rice is fed into a boiling water tank at a temperature of approximately 100°C, where it is heated to promote gelatinization, heated and cooked, water is added, and the rice is transferred onto a net conveyor equipped with a lid for 10 minutes.
By introducing a completely new process of finishing steaming and steaming with steam at a temperature of 1°C or higher, continuous steaming, which was previously said to be impossible, produces rice that has no color loss or is even better than rice cooked in a rice cooker. It was the first time that I succeeded in making fluffy and delicious rice with a soft inner and outer texture. According to the present invention, the device can be installed in a relatively narrow space, and since it is a continuous steaming method, a large amount of rice can be easily prepared in a short time without requiring any special incidental equipment. Therefore, there are no problems with the installation location or limited rice cooking capacity, and there is no need to use many types of auxiliary equipment, so it is economical as well. Furthermore, rice containing water is placed in a boiling hot water bath to promote gelatinization, heat cooking, and adding water, making it extremely energy efficient compared to conventional batch methods and rice cookers. It can achieve considerable energy savings and is also extremely efficient. In addition, since seasoned rice, mixed rice, etc. can be automatically prepared, there are many excellent advantages such as considerable labor savings1. Thus, when implemented in school lunch centers and large-scale cafeterias, the effects are remarkable.

It should be noted that the above embodiments are merely illustrative of the present invention, and therefore, it goes without saying that various modifications and changes can be made as necessary. For example, it is preferable to supply rice to the boiling water tank 5 in fixed quantities, but it is not necessary to supply rice in strictly fixed quantities. In addition, a bar conveyor 7 is used in the hot water tank 5 to create a hopper 1.
The rice supplied from the factory was transferred while being soaked in boiling water.
It may also be transferred while immersed in hot water by other means.

Furthermore, the configuration of the entire device or each conveyor 7 and 1
Of course, the configuration, shape, length, width, etc. of 3 can be changed as necessary.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

The accompanying drawing is a schematic side view showing an embodiment of the continuous steaming and cooking apparatus according to the present invention. 1: Hopper 5: Hot water tank 2 7: Rice feed bar conveyor 9: Ingredient supply device 10: Flavoring agent supply device 13: Net conveyor 14: Steam pipe 17: Grinding roll 19.2D: Steam outlet 21: Cover 22: Stirring roll 26: Finishing steaming chamber 27: Mixing chamber 60: Rice

Claims (2)

[Claims] (1) The step of discharging the pre-moisturized rice and passing it into boiling water to promote gelatinization, heating and adding water, and the step of sending the heated and water-added rice onto a net conveyor. A method for continuous steaming and cooking rice, comprising the steps of: finishing steaming the rice carried by the net conveyor by blowing out high-temperature steam of 101° C. or higher from the lower side of the conveyor. (2) A rice storage container into which rice moistened in advance is continuously supplied, and the rice supplied from the container is transferred while being immersed in boiling water to promote gelatinization and heat-cook the rice. and a hot water tank for adding water, a net conveyor for transferring the rice fed from the hot water tank, and the lower side of the net conveyor for steaming the rice transferred by the net conveyor by applying high-temperature steam of 101°C or higher. a finishing steaming chamber having a steam outlet and a cover above the net conveyor; and the net conveyor, which is arranged adjacent to the finishing steaming chamber and for sifting cooked rice that has passed through the finishing steaming chamber. a steam chamber having a steam outlet on the lower side and a cover on the upper side of the net conveyor; a steam source for supplying high-temperature steam at a required temperature to each of the steam outlets; 1. A continuous steaming rice-cooking device characterized by comprising: means for supplying boiling water.