The 5 mg/L Water Behind CU's New Triangle Kimbap
CU announced on September 17 (KST) that the rice in its samgak-gimbap is now cooked in water with a hardness of 5 mg/L or lower. BGF Retail, which runs the chain, applied it across the whole rice process, from washing and soaking the grain through to the cooking itself. Water at the plants making those rice balls had been coming in at 50 to 120 mg/L. CU ran it through a softener to strip the minerals out, washing water included. What hardness is doing inside the grain Hardness counts the calcium and magnesium dissolved in water. According to the ZDNet Korea report on the launch, the mechanism CU is working from is that the lower the hardness, the more effectively water gets into the rice tissue, helping the starch take it up and raising how much moisture the cooked rice retains. A task force inside CU's merchandising division, the Food Tech Lab, spent roughly ten months on it, looking for the hardness that suits the Saecheongmu rice from South Jeolla the chain currently buys....