Rice is one of the most important staple foods in China, which is usually cooked as fresh food. And it has great theoretical and practical significance to study the relationship between components and its cooking quality. Protein is the second largest storage substance in the endosperm of rice seed, which is next only to starch, and is one of the important indexes to determine the quality of rice. The main component of rice protein is glutelin, accounting for about 65% to 80%. The other three proteins are albumin, prolaminand globulin. Rice protein is considered as one of the high quality plant proteins. Compared with soybean protein and wheat protein, the structure and properties of rice protein have not been systemically and deeply studied. And the correlation of rice protein and its edible quality is even more insufficient. In this paper, research progress and achievements of rice protein composition, structure, and its influence on the cooking quality were reviewed and summarized, which might help to find the deficiency and academic trend of studies on rice protein.