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The effects of drying conditions, viz. drying temperature, surface velocity, and initial moisture content, on the quality characteristics of cooked rice, including both texture and taste attributes, were investigated. A response surface methodology was employed to analyze the effects of drying conditions on the cooked rice quality and to optimize the drying parameters. The results show that moisture content is the most important positive factor, followed by drying temperature with a negative effect, and surface velocity is the least important, with a negative effect on taste. The drying conditions exert the significant effects on the texture and taste attributes of cooked rice. Drying temperature has a positive effect on the cohesiveness value of cooked rice and negative effects on the partial quality attributes, including hardness, gumminess, chewiness, stickiness, color, and flavor. The increase of surface velocity may cause an increase in cohesiveness and color and a decline in hardness, gumminess, smell, palatability, and flavor. Higher moisture content of rough rice contributes to improved color and palatability attributes and reduce the hardness and gumminess indexes. The overall taste value of cooked rice for the dried rough rice has a positive correlation with the hardness, gumminess, and stickiness (p < 0.05). Results suggested that the highest taste value for the rough rice was obtained under optimal conditions of drying temperature of 35.13°C and surface velocity of 0.41 m/s for rough rice with an initial moisture content of 19.69%. The result was verified by validation experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]