Effects of Immersion Solutions on Characteristics and Consumer Preference of Cassava

Indonesia's rice consumption reached 139 kg / capita / year. This figure is still quite high compared to other countries in Asia, such as Japan (60 kg / capita / year). That condition indicated that consumption of carbohydrates in Indonesia is still dominated by rice, which reached 78%. Many efforts to decrease the consumption of rice are needed, and one of them is to optimize the utilization of cassava into cassava rice. This research was aimed to assess technologies in production process of cassava rice which applicable at farmer level and also can be accepted by consumers. This experiments used Completely Randomized Design with 5 replications. Treatments consists of various types of marinade solution, namely 1) sodium bicarbonate 2%, 2) metaphosphate 0.1%, 3) sodium bicarbonate + metaphosphate 2% + 0.1%, and 4) running water. The stages of production process were:  sortation of  rice cassava, cassava bark stripping, washing, soaking, draining, pressing, drying, and filtering. Parameter observations consist of moisture content, ash content, protein content, fat content, carbohydrate content. Organoleptic tests on rice cassava include color, taste, aroma, firmness, stickiness and eating palatability. The results showed that the moisture content of the rice cassava range 4.419% - 5.378%, ash content was 0.171% - 0.182%, protein content was 1.745% - 2.024%, fat content of 0.792% - 0.930%, and carbohohidrate level was 91.693% - 92.564%. Meanwhile, organoleptic tests showed that the treatment of type marinade gave significant effects on the color, flavor, aroma, touchness/elasticity and eating palability, except the level of stickiness. Soaking with sodium bicarbonate and metaphosphate causing cassava rice color became brighter and also gave higher valuation by panelists ( 5.8 = like). Moreover, panelists gave 5.2 points (like) on eating palability to sample with treated by immersion in tap water without the use of sodium bicarbonate and metaphospahate but not significantly different from soaking with sodium bicarbonate.