Freezing rice for storage has typically been used to kill bugs, eggs, and pupae in dry rice and other grains before long-term and oxygen-free storage. I think it’s an outdated method because there is an easier method of ensuring you get a thirty-year shelf life out of your emergency rice. Let’s take a look.
Preppers should not freeze rice before long-term storage. Freezing kills bugs, eggs, and pupae, but this method is not as reliable as storage in an oxygen-free container. Freezing bulk rice takes a tremendous amount of time and increases moisture content, leading to mold growth, chemical oxidation, and spoilage.
Using Mylar bags and/or food-grade pales with Oxygen absorbers is a quicker, more effective method of processing rice for long-term storage than freezing.
Freezing Rice Is Not An Effective Way to Kill Bug Eggs
Weevils are the main bug that invades rice and other whole grains. Most rice has bug eggs when you get it. You must process rice to ensure eggs don’t hatch and infest your food.
The problem with freezing is that some weevil eggs can survive deep freezing temperatures. They may not be killed even if frozen. You won’t know what kind of weevil you have, so don’t waste a lot of time and freezer space to “maybe” kill bug eggs.
Weevils eat just about any dry whole food in your pantry, including whole grains, nuts, beans, corn, and cereal, and they will travel from other grains to rice.
Freezing Rice Increases Moisture Content
Moisture is debatably the number one enemy of long-term food storage.
When you store rice in your freezer, you combine your freezer’s cold temperatures with air, which creates moisture or condensation when rice is removed from the freezer. There is no way around it. Avoid freezing uncooked rice. It may cause it to spoil.
Warning: Dried foods like rice, beans, and other whole grains must be stored with 10% or less moisture in an oxygen-free container to avoid botulism and other foodborne bacteria.
Check out Ready Squirrel’s most popular article on rice as survival food, “The Best Way To Store Rice Long-term”
Oxygen-Free Containers Are The Best Way To Kill Bugs
Storing rice in Oxygen-free containers kills bugs, bug eggs, and pupae within 2 weeks, and it’s quicker than freezing. Storing rice like this also gives the rice a 30-plus year shelf-life. What prepper doesn’t love that?
Not to mention storing rice this way also removes two other ways food spoils: eliminating light and oxygen. If the rice has less than 10% moisture when sealed, you’ve taken care of the moisture issue. Now all you have to worry about is heat, and storing your rice in a cool, dry location, and you’re looking at rice that will store for decades.
Why freeze your rice when you can drop a 2000 CC Oxygen absorber in an 18″x24″ Mylar bag, seal it and forget about it?
Watch the Ready Squirrel video below to learn how to store rice in buckets with Mylar bags and oxygen absorbers, including the necessary tools and step-by-step instructions.
Store hundreds of pounds of rice on the cheap check out the Ready Squirrel article, “How to Store Rice in a 5-gallon Bucket. “
Freezing Rice Takes Time and Freezer Space
If you’re doing long-term storage, you probably process large quantities of rice because you buy in bulk to get good deals.
Let’s say you bought a 50 lb bag of white rice at a big box store.
How much rice can you fit in your freezer? Let’s say it’s 10 pounds. So the first 10 lbs need to be in the freezer for 5 days if you follow the suggested guidelines for killing bugs. That means it will take you 5 weeks of freezer time to process a 50 lb bag of rice. Uh, no thanks.
A better solution, use an 18″ x 24″ Food-grade Mylar bag, pour the rice into the bag, drop a 2000 CC Oxygen Absorber in the bag, seal the bag with a household iron, mark the package date, and put rice on the bag, and you are done. Let’s say it took you 20 minutes.
Freezing Doesn’t Eliminate Bacteria on Rice: Oxygen-Free Storage Does
An oxygen-free storage container eliminates aerobic bacteria. Freezing rice before storage may create a healthier environment for anaerobic and aerobic bacteria to multiply. Bacteria like botulism thrive in a high moisture, low oxygen environment, and vice versa for aerobic bacteria.
You Want To Repackage Rice, So Don’t Freeze It
Leave rice in-store packaging, and you will get a maximum shelf-life of 5 years. Maybe this is good enough for you, but it won’t keep bug eggs from hatching, or moths, or weevils from moving in.
If you are prepping or interested in a survival pantry, you want a 30-year shelf-life, so repackaging is a must.
Don’t Freeze Rice: Store It In Food Bags and Buckets
Store Rice with the perfect storage trifecta, Mylar bags, Food grade pales, and Oxygen Absorbers.
Mylar bags provide a superior oxygen barrier and are not permeable to air or moisture, better than any other DIY container except #10 cans. Still, the cans aren’t available to most people.
On the downside, Mylar bags are delicate. Rodents can chew through them; if you move them around, they rip easily and get pin-holing.
Buckets are tough, rodents don’t usually chew through buckets. They are stackable and easy to organize.
On the downside, buckets don’t provide a great seal. Plastic is permeable to air, and the seal on pale lids is spotty.
Oxygen absorbers and an airtight container are a must for long-term rice storage. If you have weevil eggs in your rice and just put them in a bucket, there is a good chance you will come back a couple of years later to find a squirming mess of crawlies.
Conclusion
Ok, people have been freezing rice for years before they store it for long-term storage, but it’s not the best method, not even close.
Imagine freezing 250 lbs of rice before storing it in 5-gallon buckets. Why? Freezer space is limited, and it takes a ridiculous amount of time to get what you could do in minutes. If you are storing minimal amounts of rice, it might be worth it if you want to save some money, but for long-term bulk storage, it’s not practical and poses possible challenges by creating higher moisture content.
At one point in history, freezing was the only DIY option, but Oxygen Absorbers and Mylar bags changed the food storage game. If you plan to repackage rice for long-term storage, why not use Oxygen absorbers, food-grade pales, and Mylar bags? Then freezing is an unnecessary step.
