4 ms·

Rice will be full of pest insect eggs. They'll hatch after a while (smallish count of months, likely). You've got to freeze it (to kill the eggs) and then seal

Rice will be full of pest insect eggs. They'll hatch after a while (smallish count of months, likely). You've got to freeze it (to kill the eggs) and then seal it (to keep more pests from getting in) and/or add stuff that'll kill anything that hatches very fast (IIRC diatomaceous earth is popular for this) Other grains have similar pest problems, plus if it's wheat or similar and ground into flour (not e.g. whole wheat berries), it'll get worse over time from air exposure. Anything with the germ still on/in it will go rancid after a while, and the germ's full of nutrients so you really want that part if you can keep it.

sva_ 4y ago
Small (1kg) vacuum-sealed bags should be fine though.
- corrral 4y ago
  Correct—it's doable, it just takes more material and planning than "buy bag of rice, stick bag in dry place in basement". Do that, you'll be sad when you try to use it in a year or three. The alternative is maintaining a stock but constantly drawing it down & replenishing it, but it gets difficult to maintain a substantial reserve that way, unless you already eat your "apocalypse" diet most of the time, so go through a lot of the same things you've got in storage even during normal times—say, if you already eat rice & beans 5+ dinners a week. You're capped by the rate at which you go through those things in non-emergency times. Plus it takes some planning and ongoing monitoring/inventorying, which is a non-zero amount of work.
  - sva_ 4y ago
    Maybe I'm ignorant of this, but it was my impression that vacuum-sealed white rice should pretty much last indefinitely?
    - corrral 4y ago
      I'd expect a couple years at least. A quick Google gives common wisdom that you still want anti-weevil measures (bay leaves in the bag, the aforementioned diatomaceous earth) with that method. My point with that part was just that you have to do the vacuum sealing (unless you're buying a product with all this taken care of, which I'd assume is expensive) and such, at least, which means more equipment and material than simply buying sealed (but not vacuum sealed) bags at the store and putting them on a shelf. Getting grains ready for long-term storage means more than just keeping mice and bugs and water out—you've gotta worry about oxygen, and about insect eggs already present in the grain, too. Just stuff one might not think of if one were to make the wrong assumptions. [EDIT] Incidentally, trying to store all one's calories, at least more than enough for a week or two, might not be the right idea anyway, short of a truly horrible catastrophe like nuclear war—my great-grandparents and grandparents, who lived through the depression and World War II, respectively, didn't seem to be all that in to storing lots of grain. What they were into, big time, was canning vegetables, and gardening (to grow stuff to put in the cans). Man, were they ever into canning vegetables. I'd guess that's the result of some hard lessons about how to make it through hard times—plus, just, times before modern shipping and refrigeration when food availability dropped a whole bunch in Winter.
      - giantg2 4y ago
        "What they were into, big time, was canning vegetables, and gardening (to grow stuff to put in the cans). Man, were they ever into canning vegetables." Ditto
        corrral 4y ago
        I became aware of the world just as seasonal food availability was becoming a thing of the past—I remember significantly more seasonal variation, but only when I was pretty young—so this really stuck with me growing up. All those colorful jars lined up on shelves, all the gardening, all the boiling-of-jars, et c. All that work, and a can of the same thing was $0.29 at the store. So I assume they all developed these super-similar habits for really great reasons. And since the ~1960s and earlier were just normally pretty similar to what a significant food shortage would probably look like now (at least in countries that will almost certainly be able to maintain adequate supplies of staples, like the US) it seems to me that might be a good first place to look. Stock up on canned veggies, worry less about the rest of it. Maybe get some chickens and plant some berry bushes (they also all loved keeping a line or two of berry bushes, and it seems like in their generations you just alway kept chickens, if you weren't smack in the middle of town)
    - lazide 4y ago
      If you vacuum seal it with mylar lined bags and some oxygen absorbers, it can last up to 5 years, which is a long time. Oxygen will get through normal plastic vacuum sealing bags and ruin the taste and eventually nutritional content otherwise after a year or two. Mylar lining stops most of that and the oxygen absorber gets the rest. The thick bags will also stop rice moths from getting through (they are able to get through most cardboard and thin plastic bags), and the lack of oxygen will stop their eggs from hatching.
giantg2 4y ago
"diatomaceous earth" This is also a suspected carcinogen. I'd be careful about putting it on food, even if you do wash it.
- codefreeordie 4y ago
  Yes, though if you're eating your emergency store of food rations because the world has ended, you probably won't live long enough to die of cancer.
  - giantg2 4y ago
    There are alternatives.
AussieWog93 4y ago
What are you talking about? I've kept bags of rice for years without any issues.
- SkyMarshal 4y ago
  What he said is generally true [1], so you must have either stored your rice in an environment that prevented them from hatching, or got lucky. [1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_weevil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_weevil
  - Jensson 4y ago
    I've never seen anything like that and I've kept rice around for years as well. Do you live in a poor country where they don't have proper food protection agencies? If things like that hatched in food people bought from stores that would make the news, I've seen it in the news before so it can't happen that often.
    - asah 4y ago
      Can confirm both: I've gotten lucky with some batches and unlucky with others. Unlucky is quite nasty, but maybe extra protein? /s
      - steve_adams_86 4y ago
        This reminds me of something I read in Discover magazine around 20 years ago. The gist of it was that immigrants in western Europe from various countries in Africa had developed nutritional deficiencies after immigrating. It appeared their diets were the same, perhaps better on paper, so it wasn't clear why their health was deteriorating. It turned out that these people had diets rich in unwashed greens and vegetables, and they were likely consuming far more beneficial bacteria, insects, and minerals in their diets. They continued their mostly-vegetarian diets in Europe, but were no longer benefitting from what tended to accompany their foods before. Not sure why I remember that. Regardless, we should all be eating dirt and weevils.
    - 4y ago
pdevr 4y ago
I have seen rice stay without any problems for more than a year. It was dried under hot sun for hours before storing. Most likely, the extreme heat took care of the weevils and the lack of moisture had a protective effect on the rice. They take the rice out and soak it (as in soaking, not washing) like beans before cooking. Probably for re-hydrating it.
Andys 4y ago
I keep rice and grains permanently in a chest freezer. It is fairly low power and you can cook directly from frozen, 1 cup at a time.
- OJFord 4y ago
  Does it not affect texture? E.g. I'd imagine they might be more inclined to crumble/turn to mush on boiling?
  - Andys 4y ago
    Nope, you can use the rice as normal in a recipe, no change. And the grains go straight into the grain mill and turn into flour the same as normal.
mbg721 4y ago
Eek. Ideally, you don't have a bag of rice for months and months at a time, though, you have a bag of rice and once you've used up most of it, you buy a new bag of rice, etc. There is kind of an inherent assumption that the person doing this is fond of eating rice.

sva_ 4y ago

Small (1kg) vacuum-sealed bags should be fine though.

corrral 4y ago
Correct—it's doable, it just takes more material and planning than "buy bag of rice, stick bag in dry place in basement". Do that, you'll be sad when you try to use it in a year or three. The alternative is maintaining a stock but constantly drawing it down & replenishing it, but it gets difficult to maintain a substantial reserve that way, unless you already eat your "apocalypse" diet most of the time, so go through a lot of the same things you've got in storage even during normal times—say, if you already eat rice & beans 5+ dinners a week. You're capped by the rate at which you go through those things in non-emergency times. Plus it takes some planning and ongoing monitoring/inventorying, which is a non-zero amount of work.
- sva_ 4y ago
  Maybe I'm ignorant of this, but it was my impression that vacuum-sealed white rice should pretty much last indefinitely?
  - corrral 4y ago
    I'd expect a couple years at least. A quick Google gives common wisdom that you still want anti-weevil measures (bay leaves in the bag, the aforementioned diatomaceous earth) with that method. My point with that part was just that you have to do the vacuum sealing (unless you're buying a product with all this taken care of, which I'd assume is expensive) and such, at least, which means more equipment and material than simply buying sealed (but not vacuum sealed) bags at the store and putting them on a shelf. Getting grains ready for long-term storage means more than just keeping mice and bugs and water out—you've gotta worry about oxygen, and about insect eggs already present in the grain, too. Just stuff one might not think of if one were to make the wrong assumptions. [EDIT] Incidentally, trying to store all one's calories, at least more than enough for a week or two, might not be the right idea anyway, short of a truly horrible catastrophe like nuclear war—my great-grandparents and grandparents, who lived through the depression and World War II, respectively, didn't seem to be all that in to storing lots of grain. What they were into, big time, was canning vegetables, and gardening (to grow stuff to put in the cans). Man, were they ever into canning vegetables. I'd guess that's the result of some hard lessons about how to make it through hard times—plus, just, times before modern shipping and refrigeration when food availability dropped a whole bunch in Winter.
    - giantg2 4y ago
      "What they were into, big time, was canning vegetables, and gardening (to grow stuff to put in the cans). Man, were they ever into canning vegetables." Ditto
      - corrral 4y ago
        I became aware of the world just as seasonal food availability was becoming a thing of the past—I remember significantly more seasonal variation, but only when I was pretty young—so this really stuck with me growing up. All those colorful jars lined up on shelves, all the gardening, all the boiling-of-jars, et c. All that work, and a can of the same thing was $0.29 at the store. So I assume they all developed these super-similar habits for really great reasons. And since the ~1960s and earlier were just normally pretty similar to what a significant food shortage would probably look like now (at least in countries that will almost certainly be able to maintain adequate supplies of staples, like the US) it seems to me that might be a good first place to look. Stock up on canned veggies, worry less about the rest of it. Maybe get some chickens and plant some berry bushes (they also all loved keeping a line or two of berry bushes, and it seems like in their generations you just alway kept chickens, if you weren't smack in the middle of town)
  - lazide 4y ago
    If you vacuum seal it with mylar lined bags and some oxygen absorbers, it can last up to 5 years, which is a long time. Oxygen will get through normal plastic vacuum sealing bags and ruin the taste and eventually nutritional content otherwise after a year or two. Mylar lining stops most of that and the oxygen absorber gets the rest. The thick bags will also stop rice moths from getting through (they are able to get through most cardboard and thin plastic bags), and the lack of oxygen will stop their eggs from hatching.

giantg2 4y ago

"diatomaceous earth" This is also a suspected carcinogen. I'd be careful about putting it on food, even if you do wash it.

codefreeordie 4y ago
Yes, though if you're eating your emergency store of food rations because the world has ended, you probably won't live long enough to die of cancer.
- giantg2 4y ago
  There are alternatives.

AussieWog93 4y ago

What are you talking about? I've kept bags of rice for years without any issues.

SkyMarshal 4y ago
What he said is generally true [1], so you must have either stored your rice in an environment that prevented them from hatching, or got lucky. [1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_weevil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_weevil
- Jensson 4y ago
  I've never seen anything like that and I've kept rice around for years as well. Do you live in a poor country where they don't have proper food protection agencies? If things like that hatched in food people bought from stores that would make the news, I've seen it in the news before so it can't happen that often.
  - asah 4y ago
    Can confirm both: I've gotten lucky with some batches and unlucky with others. Unlucky is quite nasty, but maybe extra protein? /s
    - steve_adams_86 4y ago
      This reminds me of something I read in Discover magazine around 20 years ago. The gist of it was that immigrants in western Europe from various countries in Africa had developed nutritional deficiencies after immigrating. It appeared their diets were the same, perhaps better on paper, so it wasn't clear why their health was deteriorating. It turned out that these people had diets rich in unwashed greens and vegetables, and they were likely consuming far more beneficial bacteria, insects, and minerals in their diets. They continued their mostly-vegetarian diets in Europe, but were no longer benefitting from what tended to accompany their foods before. Not sure why I remember that. Regardless, we should all be eating dirt and weevils.
  - 4y ago

pdevr 4y ago

I have seen rice stay without any problems for more than a year. It was dried under hot sun for hours before storing. Most likely, the extreme heat took care of the weevils and the lack of moisture had a protective effect on the rice. They take the rice out and soak it (as in soaking, not washing) like beans before cooking. Probably for re-hydrating it.

Andys 4y ago

I keep rice and grains permanently in a chest freezer. It is fairly low power and you can cook directly from frozen, 1 cup at a time.

OJFord 4y ago
Does it not affect texture? E.g. I'd imagine they might be more inclined to crumble/turn to mush on boiling?
- Andys 4y ago
  Nope, you can use the rice as normal in a recipe, no change. And the grains go straight into the grain mill and turn into flour the same as normal.

mbg721 4y ago

Eek. Ideally, you don't have a bag of rice for months and months at a time, though, you have a bag of rice and once you've used up most of it, you buy a new bag of rice, etc. There is kind of an inherent assumption that the person doing this is fond of eating rice.