ABSTRACT Background and Objectives Brown rice (BR) is nutritionally superior but limited by poor cooking quality, undesirable texture, and rapid starch retrogradation. Konjac glucomannan (KGM), a commonly used hydrogel in food processing with excellent functional properties, has been proven effective in improving the quality of starchy foods. In this investigation, KGM was used as a modifier to study the influence of different KGM addition percentages (0%, 1%, 2%, 3%, 4%, 5%, w/w) on cooking quality, textural properties, and starch retrogradation of cooked BR. Findings KGM can form a dense gel network inside the rice, which can significantly increase the water absorption rate and expansion rate of the cooked BR, improve its texture characteristics, reduce hardness, enhance viscosity and elasticity, and enhance its anti‐retrogradation ability. Among them, the group with 3% KGM addition had the best effect on improving texture, and achieved the highest total sensory evaluation score (35.50). Conclusions Adding KGM during the cooking process can improve the texture characteristics and anti‐retrogradation ability of cooked BR, enabling it to achieve better cooking and edible quality. Significance and Novelty KGM holds substantial potential for developing healthy BR products with excellent edible quality and better storage stability.
Liu et al. (2026) studied this question.