Abstract
<title>Abstract</title> <p>With the rapid pace of modern life, people now seek food that is not only convenient and quick but also delicious and nutritious. As rice is the most common staple food in our daily lives, the development of ready-to-eat rice has greatly met this need. Most ready-to-eat rice products currently on the market are made primarily from white rice, with very few using sorghum as the main ingredient. Therefore, this experiment uses sorghum as the raw material to develop a new type of ready-to-eat sorghum rice.The study also investigated the effects of different drying methods on the quality of ready-to-eat sorghum rice, employing three processing methods: forced-air drying (ABD), microwave drying (MD), and vacuum freeze-drying (VFD). The nutritional composition, texture, color, sensory quality, and volatile flavor compounds of the samples were analyzed. The results showed that VFD was significantly superior to MD and ABD in terms of nutritional composition, texture, color, and sensory quality.A total of 23 key aroma compounds were detected in samples from the three drying methods, including 1 alcohol, 5 aldehydes, 2 esters, 2 ketones, 4 hydrocarbons, 3 furans, 4 pyrazines, and 2 pyrroles; compared to ABD and VFD, MD exhibited the highest number and greatest variety of volatile flavor compounds. The findings of this study provide technical support for research into the processing of ready-to-eat rice.</p>