Storing Minute Rice Long Term?

[Sherree]

Does anyone have a reason why you can't store Minute Rice long term? It doesn't take as much time and fuel to prepare as does regular rice. I was thinking of storing some to use in a quick fix "mode".

[Belle]

I don't know about the commercial Minute Rice, but I make my own and it stores great. I fixed some last night that was over 2 years old and it was fine.

[Sherree]

How do you keep yours stored, Belle? I have around 200 lbs. of regular white rice in one of my freezers, so don't have room for storing the instant rice in there.

[Patches]

When I'm dehydrating something and know that I won't have enough to fill up the dehydrator I cook some rice and fill up the extra trays with it.

I've just been keeping it in large glass jars. So far so good.

[Summerthyme]

Why would you store WHITE rice in the freezer? I can see freezing it briefly to kill off any bugs/eggs, but I've stored it without any "extras" (IOW, just in plastic ice cream containers- the heavy "Schwans" type) for 10 years without a problem. By 12 years, it was getting a little "off", so got fed to the chickens).

This is in a cool basement, but given any sort of reasonable storage conditions, if you use mylar bags and oxygen absorbers, I'd say white rice should store pretty well indefinitely.

Brown rice is another animal entirely, and I gave up long ago on storing it. I buy what we'll use in 6 months. I just can't use valuable freezer or fridge room on rice. And I note that even the "long term storage" folks like Walton Feed don't sell brown rice, so that tells me that even under optimum conditions, it just doesn't store well.

Minute rice should be fine, but if you want it to last for several years, investing in mylar and O2 absorbers would be a good bet.

Summerthyme

[Sherree]

Thanks Summer for the advice on the brown rice! The reason I store the white rice in the freezer is that I had kept a few small bags on the shelf, and it got bugs in it! I didn't freeze it first. So, since I had an extra freezer, I have stored all my rice, flour, corn meal, plus gravy mixes in it. I don't have a lot of extra room in my house, so thought that would be a good place to store it plus keep all the bugs out. I have another freezer to store meat, butter, and cheese. Both are full. So, can I just put the Minute Rice in glass jars and seal for about a year or longer without it getting too old? Like I said, I don't have any room left to store supplies and preps in my house, it's full! LOL....It's almost to the point that I feel like we're living inside a pantry!

[Belle]

How do you keep yours stored, Belle? I have around 200 lbs. of regular white rice in one of my freezers, so don't have room for storing the instant rice in there.

I store mine in glass jars (or plastic peanut butter jars) in a rubbermaid cabinet (with doors, so it's dark). No oxygen absorbers or vacuum sealing, just screw on the lid.

I dehydrate it on a fairly hot setting, after cooking like you would noodles, with only salt added (no oil or butter, just boil and drain), so any bug eggs that might have been in it are dead. The glass jars keep mature bugs out.

I make and store instant brown rice the same way. I know there's a risk of rancidity with that, but I've never seen it, even after storing it for more than 2 years. Could be that my cooking method washes out and drains off a lot of the oil in the brown rice.