Can you freeze brown rice?

vibes23

Im tryin to make some healthy lunches for work. I make them on sunday and freeze them for week. I was goin to make a take on paella (pie ella !) with chicken and brown rice.

How do you think it would freeze? would i be ok ?

GastroBoy

Yes, rice freezes perfectly well.

vibes23

Cheers man

Eviledna

I just want to add how important it is that you freeze the rice immediately after you cook it, if you let it cool at room temperature for any sort of long period of time you risk getting a bad dose of food poisoning.

Bacillus cerus is a tricky sort of food poisoning, and having experienced it, I really don't recommend it! I avoid eating left over rice at all costs now, but that might be overkill. More information here: http://www.nhs.uk/chq/Pages/can-reheating-rice-cause-food-poisoning.aspx?CategoryID=51&SubCategoryID=215

GastroBoy

Eviledna wrote: »

I just want to add how important it is that you freeze the rice immediately after you cook it, if you let it cool at room temperature for any sort of long period of time you risk getting a bad dose of food poisoning.

Bacillus cerus is a tricky sort of food poisoning, and having experienced it, I really don't recommend it! I avoid eating left over rice at all costs now, but that might be overkill. More information here: http://www.nhs.uk/chq/Pages/can-reheating-rice-cause-food-poisoning.aspx?CategoryID=51&SubCategoryID=215

While I agree that old rice can be dodgy, that seems a bit OTT to me. Day old rice, when reheated, is fine, actually most recipes for fried rice call for day old rice.

And surely your not suggesting putting freshly cooked, HOT rice into a freezer?? Where it could defrost others items around it making a germ free environment into a hotbed for germs!

Acoshla

Yeah I didn't know until last year that rice can be such a dangerous thing to reheat! I spent a good 10 years heating takeaway rice to lukewarm, heating it twice, freezing day old rice and defrosting later, I've never had any bad side effects from it!

Seaneh

GastroBoy wrote: »

While I agree that old rice can be dodgy, that seems a bit OTT to me. Day old rice, when reheated, is fine, actually most recipes for fried rice call for day old rice.

And surely your not suggesting putting freshly cooked, HOT rice into a freezer?? Where it could defrost others items around it making a germ free environment into a hotbed for germs!

Rice is the single biggest cause of food poisoning in the world.

You know that dodgy Chinese/Mexican/Indian/whatever you had that gave you the trots and you assumed it was the Chicken/Prawns/Egg, well, odds are it was the rice.

A lot of places make a big lot of rice and leave it in a hotplate/rice warmer/whatever for hours without monitoring the temp.
Rice is starch rich, moist and warn, unless you keep an eye on it, it is the perfect breeding ground for nasties.

EvilEnda was dead right in his warning.

GastroBoy

Seaneh wrote: »

GastroBoy wrote: »

While I agree that old rice can be dodgy, that seems a bit OTT to me. Day old rice, when reheated, is fine, actually most recipes for fried rice call for day old rice.

And surely your not suggesting putting freshly cooked, HOT rice into a freezer?? Where it could defrost others items around it making a germ free environment into a hotbed for germs!

Rice is the single biggest cause of food poisoning in the world.

You know that dodgy Chinese/Mexican/Indian/whatever you had that gave you the trots and you assumed it was the Chicken/Prawns/Egg, well, odds are it was the rice.

A lot of places make a big lot of rice and leave it in a hotplate/rice warmer/whatever for hours without monitoring the temp.
Rice is starch rich, moist and warn, unless you keep an eye on it, it is the perfect breeding ground for nasties.

EvilEnda was dead right in his warning.

I'm sorry but I completely disagree. Such ideas are outdated and should be forgotten. If starch, as you say, is such a place for bacteria to breed, then why not potato or pasta, which are also major sources of starch?

And you say that rice is the biggest cause of food poisoning in the world?... Any proof?

Faith

GastroBoy wrote: »

And you say that rice is the biggest cause of food poisoning in the world?... Any proof?

Only the world of science. You, on the other hand, are disagreeing with no factual basis at all.

http://www.nhs.uk/chq/Pages/can-reheating-rice-cause-food-poisoning.aspx?CategoryID=51&SubCategoryID=215

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/jun/20/food-for-fort

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacillus_cereus

http://books.google.ie/books?id=KiK9fcE4xvAC&pg=PA17&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2129673/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2130471/

And so on.

godwin

After reading those reports and after spending a year in Thailand , seeing how they treat rice , It makes me woder how come the majority of Thais aren't dead.
For 20+ years I have been eating day old even 2 day old rice and never had a problem , maybe it's down to the individual.

Faith wrote: »

Only the world of science. You, on the other hand, are disagreeing with no factual basis at all.

http://www.nhs.uk/chq/Pages/can-reheating-rice-cause-food-poisoning.aspx?CategoryID=51&SubCategoryID=215

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/jun/20/food-for-fort

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacillus_cereus

http://books.google.ie/books?id=KiK9fcE4xvAC&pg=PA17&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2129673/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2130471/

And so on.

Seaneh

GastroBoy wrote: »

I'm sorry but I completely disagree. Such ideas are outdated and should be forgotten. If starch, as you say, is such a place for bacteria to breed, then why not potato or pasta, which are also major sources of starch?

And you say that rice is the biggest cause of food poisoning in the world?... Any proof?

godwin wrote: »

After reading those reports and after spending a year in Thailand , seeing how they treat rice , It makes me woder how come the majority of Thais aren't dead.
For 20+ years I have been eating day old even 2 day old rice and never had a problem , maybe it's down to the individual.

Not to be a dick but you are both showing a basic lack of understanding the conditions bacteria thrive in.
Rice is such a risk because it's already pre-disposed to Bacillus cereus, it is also usually cooked in a big batch and used during the day from the hotplate/ricecooker and rarely is it kept to heat (ie above 60c) properly. Bacteria, especially Bacillus cereus thrive between 4c and 60c, with about 30c being the optimal temp for a lot of them to multiply (in general).


Your observation about Thailand is funny, because I spent a fair bit of time in South America myself, and I'd imagine the conditions they treat their food in aren't much different, especially when it comes to street vendors. The locals all eat it with no problems but any gringo's I've known who ate rice dishes from Ecuadorian/Peruvian/Bolivian street traders had to dip into their supply of cipro and imodium soon afterwards and have a very uncomfortable few days to follow.
The locals are resistant to the bugs because they have been exposed to them since an early age, hell, in bolivia I even knew people (bolivians) who could drink the tap water from the taps, I brushed my teeth with tap water once and spent 3 days with the world falling out of my arse.

Eviledna

Acoshla wrote: »

Yeah I didn't know until last year that rice can be such a dangerous thing to reheat! I spent a good 10 years heating takeaway rice to lukewarm, heating it twice, freezing day old rice and defrosting later, I've never had any bad side effects from it!

You've been very lucky

And surely your not suggesting putting freshly cooked, HOT rice into a freezer?? Where it could defrost others items around it making a germ free environment into a hotbed for germs!

Where in my post did I suggest putting anything HOT into the freezer? I credited the OP with the knowledge of how to cook-cool-freeze. My recommendation was to avoid cook-cool-wait-freeze-vomit-poop.

+1 Faith + seaneh - (btw I'm a girl ), the (literally) crappy thing about bacillus cerus is that once the bacteria is present, reheating or recooking the food will not kill the bacteria, and you'll get food poisoning. Now you might be lucky like Acoshla and godwin above when playing ricey-roulette, or be unlucky like me and get the dose of your life from some pre packed fried rice. Your choice.

Tis a fair caution nonetheless.

Reindeer

Eviledna wrote: »

I just want to add how important it is that you freeze the rice immediately after you cook it, if you let it cool at room temperature for any sort of long period of time you risk getting a bad dose of food poisoning.

Bacillus cerus is a tricky sort of food poisoning, and having experienced it, I really don't recommend it! I avoid eating left over rice at all costs now, but that might be overkill. More information here: http://www.nhs.uk/chq/Pages/can-reheating-rice-cause-food-poisoning.aspx?CategoryID=51&SubCategoryID=215

My mother is Japanese, and I have been eating rice all my life(I am 43 now), sometimes as often as every other day. I have often(perhaps hundreds of times) left rice out overnight in the rice cooker at room temperature, and reheated it later on in the same cooker, and never came down ill. Perhaps I am resistant, but simply reheat your food well and you'll be well.

Eviledna

I have often(perhaps hundreds of times) left rice out overnight in the rice cooker at room temperature, and reheated it later on in the same cooker, and never came down ill. Perhaps I am resistant, but simply reheat your food well and you'll be well.

Indeed if you have stored rice post cooking below 15 deg C and reheat, the toxins from the bacteria won't have been released and you won't be poisoned. It is incorrect to say that simply reheating food well is the answer though, as once the toxins are present, reheating will make no difference, you will still be poisoned.

This really isn't worth the risk, considering rice takes ~ ten minutes to cook IMO.
What's worse is the staggering number of people who are unaware of this type of poisoning. It's quite a nasty dose to get, and it's damn easily gotten.

Reindeer

Eviledna wrote: »

Indeed if you have stored rice post cooking below 15 deg C and reheat, the toxins from the bacteria won't have been released and you won't be poisoned. It is incorrect to say that simply reheating food well is the answer though, as once the toxins are present, reheating will make no difference, you will still be poisoned.

This really isn't worth the risk, considering rice takes ~ ten minutes to cook IMO.
What's worse is the staggering number of people who are unaware of this type of poisoning. It's quite a nasty dose to get, and it's damn easily gotten.

Eh. Never had poisoning. Must be a European sort of thing. Do you not clean your rice before you cook it? It's typical of most Asian prep to clean the rice by grinding it on itself in water, then discarding this wash, repeating it, and then adding new water before cooking. It also preps the shell of the rice to fluff up more and be more sticky.

I will agree that trusting mass-produced restaurant rice is inviting food poisoning. But so is trusting mass-produced restaurant anything. But in 43 years, I have never been dosed either by myself, my parents, or anyone else that has prepped rice for me. At least not to a memorable extent(I more have issues with the insane amount of sodium used in many asian food). While I understand the caution, it is incredibly rarely harmful even when you do get food poisoning from rice, as stated in some of your links. You act like it's fatal. And some pull through with minimal problems, and obviously become immune quickly(billions of indians and asians as proof).

I agree, if you are fearful, don't reheat the rice. It's easy enough to make your own. But I wouldn't run around screaming it's universally unsafe, when it obviously doesn't bother many.

Faith

Right, I'm closing this thread as it now violates our "No food safety advice" policy. OP, the science is that incorrectly stored rice can give you serious food poisoning, and simply reheating it won't get rid of the toxins. It's up to you whether you want to chance it, but we can no longer advise you on the issue.